UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

AT   LOS  ANGELES 


o        ?«•  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  be'< 


..SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 
WttVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LI6J&RY, 
ANGELES,  CALIF. 


GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

FROM 

AN  AMERICAN  POINT  OF  VIEW 


BY 

PRICE  COLLIER 

2  £   74^  3 


CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
NEW  YORK      :      :      :      :     1914 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  May.  1913 


So 
MY  WIFE  KATHARINE 

WHOSE   DESERVING   FAR  OUTSTRIPS   MY   GIVING 


G  7  y  3 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

INTRODUCTION     .......       ix 

I.     THE   CRADLE   OF   MODERN   GER- 

MANY ..........         1 

II.  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  TO  BIS- 

MARCK .........   46 

^III.     THE  INDISCREET     ......     105 

IV.     GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES  AND 

THE  PRESS      .......     156 


V.     BERLIN       ......... 

VI.     "A  LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS"     275 
VII.     THE  DISTAFF  SIDE      .....     335 

VIII.     "OHNE    ARMEE    KEIN    DEUTSCH- 

LAND,"    .........   J10 

\   IX.     GERMAN  PROBLEMS     .....     461 

*• 

X.     "FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  AND  MAL- 

ICE" .     .     .     ,     ......     525 

XI.     CONCLUSION  .  580 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  first  printed  suggestion  that  America 
should  be  called  America  came  from  a  German. 
Martin  Waldseemiiller,  of  Freiburg,  in  his  Cos- 
mographice  Introductio,  published  in  1507,  wrote: 
"I  do  not  see  why  any  one  may  justly  forbid  it  to 
be  named  after  Americus,  its  discoverer,  a  man 
of  sagacious  mind,  Amerige,  that  is  the  land  of 
Americus  or  America,  since  both  Europe  and 
Asia  derived  their  names  from  women." 

The  first  complete  ship-load  of  Germans  left 
Gravesend  July  the  24th,  1683,  and  arrived  in 
Philadelphia  October  the  6th,  1683.  They  set- 
tled in  German  town,  or,  as  it  was  then  called, 
on  account  of  the  poverty  of  the  settlers,  Armen- 
town. 

Up  to  within  the  last  few  years  the  majority 
of  our  settlers  have  been  Teutonic  in  blood  and 
Protestant  in  religion.  The  English,  Dutch, 
Swedes,  Germans,  Scotch-Irish,  who  settled  in 
America,  were  all,  less  than  two  thousand  years 
ago,  one  Germanic  race  from  the  country  sur- 
rounding the  North  Sea. 

Since  1820  more  than  5,200,000  Germans  have 


x  INTRODUCTION 

settled  in  America.  This  immigration  of  Ger- 
mans has  practically  ceased,  and  it  is  a  serious 
loss  to  America,  for  it  has  been  replaced  by  a 
much  less  desirable  type  of  settler.  In  1882 
western  Europe  sent  us  563,174  settlers,  or  87 
per  cent.,  while  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and 
Asiatic  Turkey  sent  83,637,  or  13  per  cent.  In 
1905  western  Europe  sent  215,863,  or  21.7  per 
cent.,  and  southern  and  eastern  Europe  and 
Asiatic  Turkey,  808,856,  or  78.9  per  cent,  of  our 
new  population.  In  1910  there  were  8,282,618 
white  persons  of  German  origin  in  the  United 
States;  2,501,181  were  born  in  Germany;  3,911,- 
847  were  born  in  the  United  States,  both  of 
whose  parents  were  born  in  Germany;  1,869,590 
were  born  in  the  United  States,  one  parent  born 
in  the  United  States  and  one  in  Germany. 

Not  only  have  we  been  enriched  by  this  mass 
of  sober  and  industrious  people  in  the  past,  but 
Peter  Miihlenberg,  Christopher  Ludwig,  Steu- 
ben,  John  Kalb,  George  Herkimer,  and  later 
Francis  Lieber,  Carl  Schurz,  Sigel,  Osterhaus, 
Abraham  Jacobi,  Herman  Ridder,  Oswald  Ot- 
tendorfer,  Adolphus  Busch,  Isidor,  Nathan,  and 
Oscar  Straus,  Jacob  Schiff,  Otto  Kahn,  Fred- 
erick Weyerheuser,  Charles  P.  Steinmetz,  Claus 
Spreckels,  Hugo  Mtinsterberg,  and  a  catalogue 
of  others,  have  been  leaders  in  finance,  in  in- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

dustry,  in  war,  in  politics,  in  educational  and 
philanthropic  enterprises,  and  in  patriotism. 

The  framework  of  our  republican  institutions, 
as  I  have  tried  to  outline  in  this  volume,  came 
from  the  "Woods  of  Germany."  Professor  H.  A. 
L.  Fisher,  of  Oxford,  writes:  "European  repub- 
licanism, which  ever  since  the  French  Revolution 
has  been  in  the  main  a  phenomenon  of  the  Latin 
races,  was  a  creature  of  Teutonic  civilization  in 
the  age  of  the  sea-beggars  and  the  Roundheads. 
The  half -Latin  city  of  Geneva  was  the  source  of 
that  stream  of  democratic  opinion  in  church  and 
state,  which,  flowing  to  England  under  Queen 
Elizabeth,  was  repelled  by  persecution  to  Hol- 
land, and  thence  directed  to  the  continent  of 
North  America." 

In  these  later  days  Goethe,  in  a  letter  to  Eck- 
ermann,  prophesied  the  building  of  the  Panama 
Canal  by  the  Americans,  and  also  the  prodigious 
growth  of  the  United  States  toward  the  West. 

In  a  private  collection  in  New  York,  is  an  auto- 
graph letter  of  George  Washington  to  Frederick 
the  Great,  asking  that  Frederick  should  use  his 
influence  to  protect  that  French  friend  of  Amer- 
ica, Lafayette. 

In  Schiller's  house  in  Weimar  there  still  hangs 
an  engraving  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  by 
Miiller,  a  German,  and  a  friend  of  the  poet. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

Bismarck's  intimate  friend  as  a  student  at 
Gottingen,  and  the  man  of  whom  he  spoke  with 
warm  affection  all  his  life,  was  the  American  his- 
torian Motley. 

The  German  soldiers  in  our  Civil  War  were 
numbered  by  the  thousands.  We  have  many 
ties  with  Germany,  quite  enough,  indeed,  to 
make  a  bare  enumeration  of  them  a  sufficient 
introduction  to  this  volume. 

On  more  than  one  occasion  of  late  I  have  been 
introduced  in  places,  and  to  persons,  \vhere  a 
slight  picture  of  what  I  was  to  meet  when  the 
doors  were  thrown  open  was  of  great  help  to 
me.  I  was  told  beforehand  something  of  the  his- 
tory, traditions,  the  forms  and  ceremonies,  and 
even  something  of  the  weaknesses  and  peculiar- 
ities of  the  society,  the  persons,  and  the  person- 
ages. I  am  not  so  wise  a  guide  as  some  of  my 
sponsors  have  been,  but  it  is  something  of  the 
kind  that  I  have  wished  and  planned  to  do  for 
my  countrymen.  I  have  tried  to  make  this  book, 
not  a  guidebook,  certainly  not  a  history;  rather, 
in  the  words  of  Bacon,  "grains  of  salt,  which 
will  rather  give  an  appetite  than  offend  with 
satiety,"  a  sketch,  in  short,  of  what  is  on  the 
other  side  of  the  great  doors  when  the  announcer 
speaks  your  name  and  you  enter  Germany. 


GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

FROM  AN  AMERICAN  POINT  OF  VIEW 


GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

FROM  AN  AMERICAN  POINT  OF  VIEW 


THE  CRADLE  u*    ^lujJEKiS  GERMANY 

^-<^7^S 

EIGHTY-ONE  years  before  the  discovery 
of  America,  seventy-two  years  before 
Luther  was  born,  and  forty-one  years  be- 
fore the  discovery  of  printing,  in  the  year  1411, 
the  Emperor  Sigismund,  the  betrayer  of  Huss, 
transferred  the  Mark  of  Brandenburg  to  his 
faithful  vassal  and  cousin,  Frederick,  sixth  Bur- 
grave  of  Nuremberg.  Nuremberg  was  at  one 
time  one  of  the  great  trading  towns  between 
Germany,  Venice,  and  the  East,  and  the  home 
later  of  Hans  Sachs.  Frederick  was  the  lineal 
descendant  of  Conrad  of  Hohenzollern,  the  first 
Burgrave  of  Nuremberg,  who  lived  in  the  days 
of  Frederick  Barbarossa  (1152-1189);  and  this 
Conrad  is  the  twenty -fifth  lineal  ancestor  of 
Emperor  William  II  of  Germany.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  remember  in  this  connection  that  when 

1 


2   GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

we  count  back  our  progenitors  to  the  twenty- 
first  generation,  they  number  something  over 
two  millions.  When  we  trace  an  ancestry  so 
far,  therefore,  we  must  know  something  of  the 
multitude  from  which  the  individual  is  descended, 
if  we  are  to  gather  anything  of  value  concerning 
his  racial  characteristics.  The  solace  of  all  gen- 
ealogical investigation  is  the  infallible  discovery, 
that  the  greatest  among  us  began  in  a  small 
way. 

If  you  paddle  up  the  Elbe  and  the  Havel  from 
Hamburg  to  Potsdam,  you  will  find  yourself  in 
the  territory  conquered  from  the  heathen  Wends 
in  the  days  of  Henry  I,  the  Fowler  (918-935), 
which  was  the  cradle  of  what  is  now  the  German 
Empire. 

The  Emperor  Sigismund,  who  was  often  em- 
barrassed financially  by  reason  of  his  wars  and 
journey  ings,  had  borrowed  some  four  hundred 
thousand  gold  florins  from  Frederick,  and  it  was 
in  settlement  of  this  debt  that  he  mortgaged 
the  territory  of  Brandenburg,  and  on  the  8th  of 
April,  1417,  the  ceremony  of  enfeoffment  was 
performed  at  Constance,  by  which  the  House  of 
Hohenzollern  became  possessed  of  this  territory, 
and  was  thereafter  included  among  the  great 
electorates  having  a  vote  in  the  election  of  the 
Emperor  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY      3 

It  was  Henricus  Auceps,  or  Henry  the  Fowler, 
(so  called  because  the  envoys  sent  to  offer  him 
the  crown,  found  him  on  his  estates  in  the  Hartz 
Mountains  among  his  falcons),  who  fought  off 
the  Danes  in  the  northwest,  and  the  Slavonians, 
or  Wends,  in  the  northeast,  and  the  Hungarians 
in  the  southeast,  and  established  frontier  posts 
or  marks  for  permanent  protection  against  their 
ravages.  These  marks,  or  marches,  which  were 
boundary  lines,  were  governed  by  markgrafs  or 
marquises,  and  finally  gave  the  name  of  marks 
to  the  territory  itself.  The  word  is  historically 
familiar  from  its  still  later  use  in  noting  the  old 
boundaries  between  England  and  Scotland,  and 
England  and  Wales,  which  are  still  called  marks. 

Henry  the  Fowler  was  also  called  Henry  "the 
City  Builder."  After  the  death  of  the  last  of 
the  Charlemagne  line  of  rulers,  the  Franks 
elected  Conrad,  Duke  of  Franconia,  to  succeed 
to  the  throne,  and  he  on  his  death-bed  advised 
his  people  to  choose  Henry  of  Saxony  to  succeed, 
for  the  times  were  stormy  and  the  country 
needed  a  strong  ruler.  The  Hungarians  in  the 
southeast,  and  the  Wends,  the  old  Slavonic 
population  of  Poland,  were  pillaging  and  harry- 
ing more  and  more  successfully,  and  the  more 
successfully  the  more  impudently.  Henry  be- 
gan the  building  of  strong-walled,  deep-moated 


4   GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

cities  along  his  frontier,  and  made  one,  drawn  by 
lot,  out  of  every  ten  families  of  the  countryside, 
go  to  live  in  these  fortified  towns.  Their  rulers 
were  burgraves,  or  city  counts.  Titles  now 
so  largely  ornamental  were  then  descriptive  of 
duties  and  responsibilities. 

In  the  light  of  their  future  greatness,  it  is  well 
to  take  note  of  these  two  frontier  counties,  or 
marches.  The  first,  called  the  Northern  March, 
or  March  of  Brandenburg,  was  the  religious 
centre  of  the  Slavs,  and  was  situated  in  the  midst 
of  forests  and  marshes  just  beyond  the  Elbe. 
This  March  of  Brandenburg  was  won  from  the 
Slavs  in  the  first  instance  by  the  Saxons  and 
Franks  of  the  Saxon  plain.  When  the  bur- 
grave,  Frederick  of  Hohenzollern,  came  to  take 
possession  of  his  new  territory  he  was  received 
with  the  jesting  remark:  "Were  it  to  rain  bur- 
graves  for  a  whole  year,  we  should  not  allow 
them  to  grow  in  the  march."  But  Frederick's 
soldiers  and  money,  and  his  Nuremberg  jewels, 
as  his  cannon  were  called,  ended  by  gaining 
complete  control,  a  control  in  more  powerful 
hands  to-day  than  ever  before. 

The  second,  called  the  Eastern  or  Austrian 
March,  was  situated  in  the  basin  of  the  Danube. 
These  two  great  states  were  formed  in  lands 
that  had  ceased  to  be  German  and  had  be- 


come  Slav  or  Finnish  territory.  The  fighting 
appetite  of  the  German  tribes,  and  the  spirit  of 
chivalry  later,  which  had  drawn  men  in  other 
days  in  France  to  the  East,  in  Spain  against  the 
Moors,  in  Normandy  against  England,  were  of- 
fered an  opportunity  and  an  outlet  in  Germany, 
by  forays  and  fighting  against  the  Finns  and 
Slavs. 

Out  of  the  conquest  and  settlement  of  these 
territories  grew,  what  we  know  to-day,  as  the 
German  Empire  and  the  Austrian  Empire.  Out 
of  their  margraves,  who  were  at  first  sentinel 
officers  guarding  the  outer  boundaries  of  the 
empire,  and  mere  nominees  of  the  Emperor, 
have  developed  the  Emperor  of  Germany  and 
the  Emperor  of  Austria,  the  one  ruling  over  the 
most  powerful  nation,  the  other  the  head  of  the 
most  exclusive  court,  in  Europe. 

When  a  man  becomes  a  power  in  the  world, 
these  days,  our  first  impulse  is  to  ask  about  his 
ancestry.  Who  were  his  father  and  his  mother; 
what  and  who  were  his  grandfathers  and  grand- 
mothers, and  who  were  their  forebears.  Where 
did  they  come  from,  what  was  the  climate;  did 
they  live  by  the  sea,  or  in  the  mountains,  or  in 
the  plains.  We  are  at  once  hot  on  the  trail  of  his 
success.  Be  he  an  American,  we  wish  to  know 
whether  his  people  came  from  Holland,  from 


6   GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

France,  from  England,  or  from  Belgium;  where 
did  they  settle,  in  New  England,  in  New  York, 
or  in  the  South.  We  no  longer  accept  ability  as 
a  miracle,  but  investigate  it  as  an  evolution.  If 
the  man  be  great  enough,  cities  vie  with  each 
other  to  claim  him  as  their  child;  he  acquires 
an  Homeric  versatility  in  cradles. 

Whatever  one  may  think  of  William  II  of 
Germany,  he  is  just  now  the  predominating 
figure  in  Europe,  if  not  in  the  world.  This  must 
be  our  excuse  for  a  word  or  two  concerning  the 
race  from  which  came  his  twenty-fifth  lineal 
ancestor. 

It  is  exactly  five  hundred  years  since  his  pres- 
ent empire  was  founded  in  the  sandy  plains 
about  the  Elbe,  and  a  thousand  years  before 
that  brings  us  to  the  dim  dawn  of  any  histori- 
cal knowledge  whatever  about  the  Germans. 
When  the  Cimbrians  and  Teutonians  came  into 
^contact  with  the  Romans,  in  113  B.  C.,  is  the 
\beginning  of  all  things  for  these  people.  In 
that  year  the  inhabitants  of  the  north  of  Italy 
awoke  one  morning  to  find  a  swarm  of  blue- 
eyed,  light-haired,  long-limbed  strangers  coming 
down  from  the  Alps  upon  them.  The  younger 
and  more  light-hearted  warriors  came  tobog- 
ganing down  the  snow-covered  mountain-sides 
on  their  shields.  They  had  been  crowded  out 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY      7 

of  what  is  now  Switzerland,  and  called  them- 
selves, though  they  were  much  alike  in  appear- 
ance, the  Cimbri  and  the  Teutones.  They  de- 
feated the  Roman  armies  sent  against  them, 
and,  turning  to  the  south  and  west,  went  on 
their  way  along  the  north  shores  of  the  Med- 
iterranean into  what  is  now  France.  They  had 
no  history  of  their  own.  Tacitus  writes  that 
they  could  neither  read  nor  write:  "Literarum 
secreta  viri  pariter  ac  feminse  ignorant."  Very 
little  is  to  be  found  concerning  them  in  the 
Roman  writers.  The  books  of  Pliny  which 
treated  of  this  time  are  lost.  It  was  toward  the 
middle  of  the  century  before  Christ  that  Csesar 
advanced  to  the  frontier  of  what  may  be  called/. 
Germany.  He  met  and  conquered  there  these 
men  of  the  blood  who  were  to  conquer  Rome, 
and  to  carry  on  the  name  under  the  title  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  Csesar  met  the  ancestors 
of  those  who  were  to  be  Caesars,  and  with  an  eye 
on  Roman  politics,  wrote  the  "Commentaries," 
which  were  really  autobiographical  messages, 
with  the  Germans  as  a  text  and  an  excuse. 

Tacitus,  born  just  about  one  hundred  years 
after  the  death  of  Csesar,  and  who  had  access  to 
the  lost  works  of  Pliny,  was  a  moralist  historian 
and  a  warm  friend  of  the  Germans.  Over  their 
shoulders  he  rapped  the  manners  and  morals  of 


8   GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

his  own  countrymen.  "Vice  is  not  treated  by 
the  Germans"  (German,  the  etymologists  say, 
is  composed  of  Gery  meaning  spear  or  lance,  and 
Man,  meaning  chief  or  lord;  Deutsch,  or  Teutsch, 
comes  from  the  Gothic  word  Thiudu,  meaning 
nation,  and  a  Deutscher,  or  Teutscher,  meant  one 
belonging  to  the  nation),  he  tells  his  countrymen, 
"as  a  subject  of  raillery,  nor  is  the  profligacy  of 
corrupting  and  being  corrupted  called  the  fash- 
ion of  the  age. "  With  Rooseveltian  enthusiasm 
he  writes  that  the  Germans  consider  it  a  crime 
"to  set  limits  to  population,  by  rearing  up  only  a 
certain  number  of  children  and  destroying  the 
rest." 

The  republicanism  of  Europe  and  America 
had  its  roots  in  this  Teutonic  civilization.  "No 
man  dictates  to  the  assembly;  he  may  persuade 
but  cannot  command.  When  anything  is  ad- 
vanced not  agreeable  to  the  people,  they  reject 
it  with  a  general  murmur.  If  the  proposition 
pleases,  they  brandish  their  javelins.  This  is 
their  highest  and  most  honorable  mark  of  ap- 
plause; they  assent  in  a  military  manner,  and 
praise  by  the  sound  of  their  arms,"  continues 
our  author. 

The  great  historian  of  the  Roman  historians, 
and  of  Rome,  Gibbon,  lends  his  authority  to  this 
praise  of  Tacitus  in  the  sentence:  "The  most 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY      9 

civilized  nations  of  modern  Europe  issued  from 
the  woods  of  Germany;  and  in  the  rude  institu- 
tions of  those  barbarians  we  may  still  distin- 
guish the  original  principles  of  our  present  laws 
and  manners." 

Rome,  which  was  not  only  a  city,  a  nation,  an 
empire,  but  a  religion;  Rome,  which  replied  to  a 
suggestion  that  the  people  of  Latium  should  be 
admitted  to  citizenship,  "Thou  hast  heard, 
O  Jupiter,  the  impious  words  that  have  come 
from  this  man's  mouth.  Canst  thou  tolerate, 
O  Jupiter,  that  a  foreigner  should  come  to  sit  in 
the  sacred  temple  as  a  senator,  as  a  consul?" 
Rome  welcomed  later  the  barbarians  from  the 
woods  of  Germany  not  only  as  citizens  and  con- 
suls,  but  as  emperors;  and  their  descendants 
rule  the  world. 

It  was  no  Capuan  training  that  finally  dis- 
tilled itself  in  a  Charlemagne,  an  Otho,  a  Luther, 
a  Frederick  the  Great,  and  a  Bismarck;  in  an 
Alfred,  a  William  the  Conqueror,  a  Cromwell,  a 
Clive,  a  Rhodes,  or  a  Gordon;  in  a  Washington, 
a  Lincoln,  a  Grant,  a  Jackson,  and  a  Lee. 

Beyond  the  certified  beyond,  we  see  dimly 
through  the  mists  of  history,  hosts  of  men  march- 
ing, ever  marching  from  the  east,  spreading  some 
toward  Norway  and  Sweden,  some  skirting  the 
Baltic  Sea  to  the  south;  .driving  their  cattle 


10    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

before  them,  and  learning  the  arts  of  peace 
and  war,  and  self-government,  from  the  harsh 
school-masters  of  pressing  needs  and  tyrannical 
circumstances,  the  only  teachers  that  confer  de- 
grees of  permanent  value.  They  become  fisher- 
men and  small  landholders  in  Sweden,  Norway, 
and  Denmark.  "Jeudi,"  or  Jupiter's  day,  be- 
comes their  god  Thor's  day,  or  Thursday; 
"Mardi,"  or  Mars's  day,  is  their  Tiu's  day,  or 
Tuesday;  "Mercredi, "  or  Mercury's  day,  is 
Odin's  or  Woden's  day,  or  Wednesday. 

These  men  trained  to  solitude  in  small  bands, 
owing  to  the  geographical  exigencies  of  their 
northern  country,  become  the  founders  of  the 
particularist  or  individualistic  nations,  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  among  others. 
Those  who  had  gone  south,  driven  by  pressure 
from  behind,  follow  the  Danube  to  the  north 
and  west,  find  the  Rhine,  and  push  on  into  what 
is  now  southwestern  Europe. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  the  Rhine  and  the 
Danube  have  their  sources  near  together,  and 
form  a  line  of  water  from  the  North  Sea  to  the 
Black  Sea,  a  significant  line  in  Europe  from  the 
beginning  down  to  this  day.  This  line  of  water 
divides  not  only  lands  but  nations,  manners, 
customs,  and  even  speech,  and  what  we  call  the 
North,  and  what  we  call  the  South,  may  be  said 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     11 

to  be,  with  negligible  exceptions,  what  is  north 
and  what  is  south  of  those  two  rivers.  It  is  and 
always  has  been  the  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  of 
Europe. 

All  of  these  peoples  mould  their  institutions, 
from  the  habits  and  customs  forced  upon  them 
by  their  surroundings.  The  members  of  the 
tribe  of  the  Suevi,  now  Swabians,  were  not  al- 
lowed to  hold  fixed  landed  possessions,  but  were 
forced  to  exchange  with  each  other  from  time  to 
time,  so  that  no  one  should  become  wedded  to  the 
soil  and  grow  rich  thereby.  Readers  of  history 
will  remember,  that  Lycurgus  attempted  similar 
legislation  among  the  Spartans,  hoping  thus  to 
keep  them  simple  and  hardy,  and  fit  for  war. 

How  many  hundreds  of  years,  these  various 
tribes  were  working  out  their  rude  political  and 
domestic  laws,  no  man  knows.  The  imaginative 
historian  pushes  his  way  through  the  mists,  and 
sees  that  the  tribes  who  lived  in  the  Scandinavian 
peninsula  were  forced  by  their  cramped  territory 
to  become  fishermen  and  sailors,  and  cultivators 
of  small  areas  of  land,  accustomed  therefore 
to  rule  themselves  in  small  groups,  and  hence 
independent  and  markedly  individualist.  Such 
historians  divide  even  these  rude  tribes  sharply 
between  the  patriarchal  and  the  particularist. 
The  particularist  commune  developed  from  the 


12    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

estate  which  was  self-sufficient,  isolated,  and 
independent.  When  they  were  associated  to- 
gether it  was  for  special  and  limited  purposes, 
so  that  independence  might  be  infringed  upon 
to  the  least  possible  extent.  The  patriarchal 
commune,  on  the  other  hand,  proceeded  from  the 
communal  family  which  provided  everything  for 
everybody.  It  was  a  general  and  compulsory 
partnership,  monopolizing  every  kind  of  business 
that  might  arise.  The  particularist  group  then, 
and  their  moral  and  political  descendants  now, 
strive  to  organize  public  authority,  and  public 
life  in  such  a  way,  that  they  are  distinctly  sub- 
ordinate to  private  and  individual  independence. 
In  the  one  the  Emperor  is  the  father  of  the 
J  family — the  Russian  Emperor  is  still  called  "Lit- 
tle Father"  -the  independence  of  each  mem- 
ber of  the  family  is  swallowed  up  in  the  complete 
authority  of  the  head  of  the  national  family ;  in 
the  other  the  president,  or  constitutional  king,  is 
the  executive  servant  of  independent  citizens, 
to  whom  he  owes  as  much  allegiance  as  they 
owe  to  him. 

In  Saxony,  to-day,  more  than  ninety  per  cent, 
of  the  agricultural  population  are  independent 
peasant  proprietors,  and  the  most  admirable  and 
successful  agriculturists  in  the  world.  It  is  said 
indeed  that  the  Curia  Regis,  which  is  the  Latin- 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     13 

ized  form  of  the  Witenagemote,  or  assembly  of 
wise  men,  of  the  Norman  and  Angevin  kings,  is 
the  foundation  of  the  common  law  of  England, 
and  the  common  law  of  England  is  the  law  of 
more  than  half  of  the  civilized  world. 

Whatever  the  varieties  and  distinctions  of 
government  anywhere  in  the  world,  these  two 
differences  are  the  fundamental  and  basic  dif- 
ferences, upon  which  all  forms  of  government 
have  been  built  up  and  developed. 

In  the  one,  everything  so  far  as  possible  is 
begun  and  carried  on  by  individual  initiative; 
in  the  other  the  state  gradually  takes  control  of 
all  enterprise.  The  philosophy  of  the  one  is 
based  upon  the  saying:  love  one  another;  the 
political  philosophy  of  the  other  is  based  upon 
the  assumption  that  men  are  not  brethren,  but 
beasts  and  mechanical  toys,  who  can  only  be 
governed  by  legislation  and  the  police.  The 
ideal  of  the  one  is  the  good  Samaritan,  the  ideal 
of  the  other  is  the  tax-collector.  The  one  de- 
pends upon  the  wine  and  oil  of  sympathy  and 
human  brotherhood;  the  other  claims  that  the 
right  to  an  iron  bed  in  a  hospital,  and  the  ser- 
vices of  a  state-paid  and  indifferent  physician, 
are  "refreshing  fruit,"  as  though  sympathy  and 
consideration,  which  are  what  our  weaker  breth- 
ren most  need,  could  be  distilled  from  taxes ! 


14    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

It  is  claimed  for  these  Teutonic  tribes,  that 
those  of  them  which  drifted  down  from  the  Scan- 
dinavian peninsula,  are  the  blood  and  moral  an- 
cestors of  the  particularist  nations  now  in  the 
ascendant  in  the  world.  The  love  of  independent 
self-government,  born  of  the  geographical  neces- 
sities of  the  situation,  stamped  itself  upon  these 
people  so  indelibly,  that  Englishmen  and  Ameri- 
cans bear  the  seal  to  this  day.  This  change  from 
the  patriarchal  to  the  particularist  family  took 
place  in  this  German  race,  and  took  place  not  in 
those  who  came  from  the  Baltic  plain,  but  in 
those  who  came  from  the  Saxon  plain. 

The  tribes  from  the  Baltic  plain,  the  Goths,  for 
example,  merely  overran  the  Roman  civilization, 
spread  over  it,  drowned  it  in  superior  num- 
bers, and  with  superior  valor;  but  it  was 
the  Germans  from  the  Scandinavian  peninsula 
who  conquered  Rome,  and  conquered  her  not 
by  force  alone,  but  by  offering  to  the  world  a 
superior  social  and  political  organization.  It 
was  to  this  branch  of  the  German  race  that  Varus 
lost  his  legions,  at  the  place  where  the  Ems  has 
its  source,  at  the  foot  of  the  Teutoburger  Wald. 
Charlemagne  was  of  these,  and  Jiis  name  Karl,  or 
Kerl,  or  peasant,  and  the  fact  that  his  title  is  the 
only  one  in  the  world  compoun«d  of  greatness 
and  the  people  in  equal  measure,  is  the  pith  of 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     15 

what  the  Germans  brought  to  leaven  the  whole 
political  world.  He  made  the  common  man  so 
great,  that  the  world  has  consented  to  his  unique 
and  superlative  baptismal  title  of  Karl  the  Great, 
or  Carolus  Magnus,  or  Charlemagne. 

The  pivotal  fact  to  be  remembered  is  that  these 
German  tribes  saved  Europe  by  their  love  of 
liberty,  and  by  their  virility,  from  the  decadence 
of  an  orientalized  Rome.  Rome,  and  all  Rome 
meant,  was  not  destroyed  by  these  ancestors  of 
ours;  on  the  contrary,  they  saved  what  was  best 
worth  saving  from  the  decline  and  fall  of  Rome, 
and  made  out  of  it  with  their  own  vigorous  laws 
a  new  world,  the  modern  western  world.  Great 
Britain,  Germany,  and  the  United  States  are 
not  descended  from  Egypt,  Greece,  or  Rome, 
but  from  "those  barbarians  who  issued  from  the 
woods  of  Germany." 

Every  school-boy  should  be  taught  that  Rome 
died  of  a  disease  contracted  from  contact  with 
the  Oriental,  the  Syrian,  the  Jew,  the  Greek,  the 
riffraff  of  the  eastern  and  southern  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean;  who,  by  the  way,  make  up  the 
bulk  of  the  immigration  into  America  at  this 
time.  Rome  was  an  incurable  invalid  long  be- 
fore the  Germans  took  control  of  the  western 
world  and  saved  it. 

When  the  Roman  Emperor  Augustus  died,  in 


16    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

14  A.  D.,  to  be  succeeded  by  Tiberius,  the  Roman 
Empire  was  bounded  on  the  north  and  east  by 
the  Rhine,  the  Danube,  the  Black  Sea  and  its 
southern  territory,  and  Syria;  by  all  the  known 
country  from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
in  northern  Africa  on  the  south;  and  by  the 
Atlantic  Ocean  as  far  north  as  the  river  Elbe  on 
the  west.  Five  hundred  years  later,  about  500 
A.  D.,  the  Barbarians,  as  they  were  called,  had 
thrust  aside  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Saxons 
controlled  the  southern  and  eastern  coasts  of 
England;  the  Franks  were  rulers  in  the  whole 
country  from  the  Loire  to  the  Elbe;  south  of 
them  the  Visigoths  ruled  Spain;  Italy  and  all 
the  country  to  the  north  and  east  of  the  Adri- 
atic, as  far  as  the  Danube,  were  in  the  hands  of 
the  Ostrogoths.  The  Roman  Empire  had  been 
pushed  to  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean, 
with  its  capital  at  Constantinople. 

In  another  three  hundred  years,  or  in  800 
A.  D.,  the  king  of  one  of  these  German  tribes  re- 
vived the  title  of  Roman  Emperor,  was  crowned 
by  the  Pope,  Leo  III,  and  governed  Europe  as 
Charlemagne.  His  banner  with  the  double- 
headed  eagle,  representing  the  two  empires  of 
Germany  and  Rome,  is  the  standard  of  Austria 
to-day.  Charles  Martel,  who  led  the  West 
against  the  East,  defeating  the  Arabs  in  the  coun- 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     17 

try  between  what  is  now  Tours  and  Poitiers, 
was  Charlemagne's  grandfather.  What  is  now 
western  Europe,  became  the  home  and  the  con- 
solidated kingdom  of  the  German  tribes  who  had 
drifted  down  from  the  west  of  the  Baltic,  and 
into  the  Saxon  plain.  They  had  become  mas- 
ters in  this  territory:  after  victories  over  the 
Mongolian  tribes,  and  the  Huns  under  Attila, 
who  had  conquered  and  plundered  as  far  as 
Strasburg,  Worms,  and  Treves,  and  were  finally 
defeated  near  what  is  now  Chalons;  after  driv- 
ing off  the  Arabs  under  Charles  the  Hammer 
(732) ;  after  imposing  their  rule  upon  the  Roman 
Empire,  the  remains  of  which  cowered  in  Con- 
stantinople, where  the  Ottoman  Turk  took  even 
that  from  it  in  1453,  which  date  may  well  be 
taken  as  marking  the  beginning  of  modern  his- 
tory, and  became  themselves  thereafter  one  of 
the  first  powers  in  Christian  Europe;  a  power 
which  is  now,  in  1912,  the  quarrel  ground  of  the 
Western  powers. 

These  are  Brobdingnagian  strides  through 
history,  to  reach  the  days  of  Dante,  Petrarch, 
Boccaccio,  Chaucer,  Froissart,  and  the  first 
translation  of  the  Bible  into  a  vulgar  tongue  by 
Wickliffe,  to  the  days  when  Lorenzo  de  Medici 
breathed  Greece  into  Europe,  and  the  feeling 
for  beauty  changed  from  invalidism  to  conva- 


18    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

lescence;  to  the  days  when  cannon  were  first 
used,  printing  invented,  America  discovered, 
and  the  man  Luther,  who  gave  the  Germans 
their  present  language  by  his  translation  of  the 
Bible,  and  who  delivered  us  from  papal  tyranny, 
born;  and  Agincourt,  and  Joan  of  Arc,  are  pict- 
uresque and  poignant  features  of  the  historical 
landscape. 

These  rude  German  tribes  had  been  welded  by 
hardship  and  warfare,  into  compact  and  self- 
governing  bodies.  These  loosely  bound  masses 
of  men,  women,  and  children,  straggling  down 
to  find  room  and  food,  are  now,  in  1400  A.  D., 
France,  England,  Austria,  Germany,  Scotland, 
and  Spain.  The  same  spirit  and  vigor  that 
roamed  the  coasts  all  the  way  from  Sweden  and 
Norway  to  the  mouth  of  the  Thames,  and  to  the 
Rhine,  the  Seine,  and  to  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar, 
are  abroad  again,  landing  on  the  shores  of  Amer- 
ica, circumnavigating  Africa,  and  bringing  home 
tales  of  Indians  in  the  west,  and  Indians  in  the 
east.  This  virile  stock  that  had  been  hammered 
and  hewn  was  now  to  be  polished;  and  in  Italy, 
France,  England,  and  Germany  grew  up  a  pas- 
sion for  translating  the  rough  mythology,  and 
the  fierce  fancy  of  the  north,  into  painting,  build- 
ing, poetry,  and  music. 

France,  Germany,  England,  Spain,  Holland, 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    19 

Belgium,  Italy,  too,  grew  out  of  these  German 
tribes,  who  poured  down  from  the  territory 
roughly  included  between  the  Rhine,  the  North 
Sea,  the  Oder,  and  the  Danube. 

As  we  know  these  countries  to-day,  the  defi- 
nite thing  about  them  is  their  difference.  You 
cross  the  channel  in  fifty  minutes  from  Dover 
to  Calais,  you  cross  the  Rhine  in  five  minutes, 
and  the  peoples  seem  thousands  of  miles  apart. 
"How  did  it  happen,"  asks  Voltaire,  "that,  set- 
ting out  from  the  same  point  of  departure,  the 
governments  of  England  and  of  France  arrived 
at  nearly  the  same  time,  at  results  as  dissimilar 
as  the  constitution  of  Venice  is  unlike  that  of 
Morocco?" 

One  might  ask  as  well  how  it  happened,  that 
the  speech  of  one  German  invasion  mixing  itself 
with  Latin  became  French,  of  another  Spanish, 
of  another  Portuguese,  of  another  Italian,  of 
another  English.  These  are  interesting  inqui- 
ries, and  in  regard  to  the  former  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  see,  that  men  grew  to  be  governed  differ- 
ently, according  as  the  geographical  exigencies 
of  their  homes  were  different,  and  as  they  occu- 
pied themselves  differently. 

The  observant  traveller  in  the  United  States, 
may  see  for  himself  what  differences  even  a  few 
years  of  differing  climate,  and  circumstances, 


20    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  custom  will  produce.  The  inhabitants  of 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  are  evidently  and 
visibly  different  from  those  in  Davenport,  Iowa. 
Two  towns  of  similar  size  and  wealth,  Salisbury, 
Maryland,  and  Hingham,  Massachusetts,  are 
almost  as  different,  except  in  speech,  and  even 
in  speech  the  accent  is  perceptibly  different  even 
to  the  careless  listener,  as  though  Salisbury  were 
in  the  south  of  France,  and  Hingham  in  the  north 
of  Germany.  These  changes  and  differences  are 
only  inexplicable,  to  those  who  will  not  see  the 
ethnographical  miracles  taking  place  under  their 
noses.  Look  at  the  mongrel  crowd  on  Fifth 
Avenue  at  midday,  and  remember  what  was 
there  only  fifty  years  ago,  and  the  differentia- 
tion which  has  taken  place  in  Europe  due  to 
climate,  intermarriage,  laws,  and  customs  seems 
easy  to  trace  and  to  explain. 

The  fishermen  and  tillers  of  the  soil  in  the 
Scandinavian  peninsula,  afterward  the  settlers 
in  the  Saxon  plain  and  in  England,  recognized 
him  who  ruled  over  their  settled  place  of  abode 
as  king;  while  roaming  bands  of  fighting  men 
would  naturally  attach  themselves  to  the  head 
of  the  tribe,  as  the  leader  in  war,  and  recognize 
him  as  king.  As  late  as  the  death  of  Char- 
lemagne, when  his  powerful  grip  relaxed,  the 
tribes  of  Germans,  for  they  were  little  more 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    21 

even  then,  fell  apart  again.  Another  family  like 
that  of  Pepin  arose  under  Robert  the  Strong, 
and  under  Hugue  Capet  (987)  acquired  the 
title  of  Kings  of  France.  The  monarchy  grew 
out  of  the  weakening  of  feudalism,  and  feudalism 
had  been  the  gradual  setting,  in  law  and  custom, 
of  a  way  of  living  together,  of  these  detached 
tribes  and  clans,  and  their  chiefs. 

A  powerful  warrior  was  rewarded  with  a  horse, 
a  spear;  later,  when  territory  was  conquered 
and  the  tribe  settled  down,  land  was  given  as 
a  reward.  Land,  however,  does  not  die  like  a 
horse,  or  wear  out  and  get  broken  like  a  spear, 
and  the  problem  arises  after  the  death  of  the 
owner,  as  to  who  is  his  rightful  heir.  Does  it 
revert  to  the  giver,  the  chief  of  the  tribe,  or  does 
it  go  to  the  children  of  the  owner?  Some  men 
are  strong  enough  to  keep  their  land,  to  add  to  it, 
to  control  those  living  upon  it,  and  such  a  one 
becomes  a  feudal  ruler  in  a  small  way  himself. 
He  becomes  a  duke,  a  dux  or  leader,  a  count, 
a  margrave,  a  baron,  and  a  few  such  powerful 
men  stand  by  one  another  against  the  king. 
A  Charlemagne,  a  William  the  Conqueror,  a 
Louis  XIV  is  strong  enough  to  rule  them  and 
keep  them  in  order  for  a  time.  Out  of  these 
conditions  grow  limited  monarchies  or  absolute 
monarchies  and  national  nobilities. 


22    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

More  than  any  other  one  factor,  the  Crusades 
broke  up  feudalism.  The  great  noble,  impelled 
by  a  sense  of  religious  duty,  or  by  a  love  of  ad- 
venture, arms  himself  and  his  followers,  and 
starts  on  years  of  journeyings  to  the  Holy  Land. 
Ready  money  is  needed  above  all  else.  Lands 
are  mortgaged,  and  the  money-lender  and  the 
merchant  buy  lands,  houses,  and  eventually 
power,  and  buy  them  cheap.  The  returning 
nobles  find  their  affairs  in  disarray,  their  fields 
cultivated  by  new  owners,  towns  and  cities 
grow  up  that  are  as  strong  or  stronger  than  the 
castle.  Before  the  Crusades  no  rofarier,  or  mere 
tiller  of  the  soil,  could  hold  a  fief,  but  the  de- 
mand for  money  was  so  great  that  fiefs  were 
bought  and  sold,  and  Philippe  Auguste  (1180) 
solved  the  problem  by  a  law,  declaring  that  when 
the  king  invested  a  man  with  a  sufficient  hold- 
ing of  land  or  fief,  he  became  ipso  facto  a  noble. 
This  is  the  same  common-sense  policy  which 
led  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  declare,  that  any  man 
with  an  income  of  $50,000  a  year  had  a  right  to 
a  peerage.  There  can  be  no  aristocracy  except 
of  the  powerful,  which  lasts.  The  difference 
to-day  is  seen  in  the  puppet  nobility  of  Austria, 
Italy,  Spain,  and  Germany  as  compared  with 
the  nobility  of  England,  which  is  not  a  nobility 
of  birth  or  of  tradition,  but  of  the  powerful: 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    23 

brewers  and  bankers,  and  statesmen  and  law- 
yers, and  leaders  of  public  opinion,  covering  their 
humble  past  with  ermine,  and  crowning  their 
achievements  with  coronets. 

The  Crusades  brought  about  as  great  a  shift- 
ing of  the  balance  of  power,  as  did  later  the  rise 
of  the  rich  merchants,  industrials,  and  nabobs  in 
England.  As  the  power  of  the  nobles  decreased, 
the  central  power  or  the  power  of  the  kings  in- 
creased; increased  indeed,  and  lasted,  down  to 
the  greatest  crusade  of  all,  when  democracy  or-  ( 
ganized  itself,  and  marched  to  the  redemption 
of  the  rights  of  man  as  man,  without  regard  to 
his  previous  condition  of  servitude. 

During  the  thousand  years  between  the  time 
when  we  first  hear  of  the  German  tribes,  in  113 
B.  C.,  and  the  year  1411,  which  marks  the  be- 
ginnings of  what  is  now  the  Prussian  monarchy, 
customs  were  becoming  habits,  and  habits  were 
becoming  laws,  and  the  political  and  social  ori- 
gins of  the  life  of  our  day  were  being  beaten  into 
shape,  by  the  exigencies  of  living  together  of 
these  tribes  in  the  woods  of  Germany. 

There  it  was  that  the  essence  of  democracy 
was  distilled.  Democracy,  Demos,  the  crowd,  the 
people,  the  nation,  were  already,  in  the  woods  of 
Germany,  the  court  of  last  resort.  They  growled 
dissent,  and  they  gave  assent  with  the  brandish- 


24    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  of  their  weapons,  javelins,  or  ballots.  They 
were  called  together  but  seldom,  and  between  the 
meetings  of  the  assembly,  the  executive  work,  the 
judicial  work,  the  punishing  of  offenders,  was  left 
to  a  chosen  few;  left  to  those  who  by  their  con- 
trol over  themselves,  their  control  over  their  fam- 
ilies, their  control  over  their  neighbors,  seemed 
best  qualified  to  exercise  the  delegated  control 
of  all. 

The  chief  aim  of  their  organized  government, 
such  as  it  was,  seems  to  have  been  to  leave  them- 
selves free  to  go  about  their  private  business, 
with  as  little  interference  from  the  demands  of 
public  business  as  possible.  The  chief  concern 
of  each  one  was  to  secure  his  right  to  mind  his 
own  business,  under  certain  safeguards  provided 
by  all.  If  those  delegated  to  govern  became  au- 
tocratic, or  evil-doers,  or  used  their  power  for 
self-advancement  or  self-enrichment,  they  were 
speedily  brought  to  book.  The  philosophy  of 
government,  then,  was  to  make  men  free  to  go 
about  their  private  business.  That  the  time 
might  come  when  politics  would  be  the  ab- 
sorbing business  of  all,  dictating  the  hours  and 
wages  of  men  under  the  earth,  and  reaching  up 
to  the  institution  of  a  recall  for  the  angel  Gabriel, 
and  a  referendum  for  the  Day  of  Judgment,  was 
undreamed  of.  The  chiefs  of  the  clans,  the 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    25 

chiefs  of  the  tribes,  the  kings  of  the  Germans,  and 
finally  the  emperors  were  all  elective.  The  di- 
vine right  of  kings  is  a  purely  modern  develop- 
ment. The  descendants  of  these  German  tribes 
in  England,  elected  their  king  in  the  days  of  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror  even,  and  as  late  as  1689  the 
Commons  of  England  voted  that  King  James  had 
abdicated,  and  that  the  throne  was  vacant! 

The  so-called  mayors  of  the  palace,  who  be- 
came kings,  were  in  their  day  representatives  of 
the  landholders,  delegates  of  the  people,  who  ad- 
vised the  king  and  aided  in  commanding  the 
armies.  These  hereditary  mayors  of  the  palace 
drifted  into  ever  greater  and  greater  control,  un- 
til they  became  hereditary  kings.  The  title  was 
only  hereditary,  however,  because  it  was  conven- 
ient that  one  man  of  experience  in  an  office  should 
be  succeeded  by  another  educated  to,  and  fa- 
miliar with,  the  same  experiences  and  duties, 
and  this  system  of  heredity  continues  down  to 
this  day  in  business,  and  in  many  professions,  and 
so  long  as  there  is  freedom  to  oust  the  incompe- 
tent, it  is  a  good  system.  There  can  never  be 
any  real  progress  until  the  sons  take  over  the 
accumulated  wisdom  and  experience  of  the 
fathers;  if  this  is  not  done,  then  each  one  must 
begin  for  himself  all  over  again.  The  hereditary 
principle  is  sound  enough,  so  long  as  there  is 


26    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

freedom  of  decapitation  in  cases  of  tyranny  or 
folly. 

There  has  continued  all  through  the  history  of 
those  of  the  blood  of  the  German  tribes,  whether 
in  Germany,  England,  America,  Norway,  Swe- 
den, or  Denmark,  the  sound  doctrine  that  ability 
may  at  any  time  take  the  place  of  the  rights  of 
birth.  Power,  or  command,  or  leadership  by 
heredity  is  looked  upon  as  a  convenience,  not 
as  an  unimpeachable  right. 

Charlemagne  (742-814),  a  descendant  of  a 
mayor  of  the  palace  who  had  become  king  by 
virtue  of  ability,  swept  all  Europe  under  his  sway 
by  reason  of  his  transcendent  powers  as  a  warrior 
and  administrator.  He  did  for  the  first  time  for 
Europe  what  Akbar  did  in  his  day  for  India.  In 
forty -five  years  he  headed  fifty-three  campaigns 
against  all  sorts  of  enemies.  He  fought  the  Sax- 
ons, the  Danes,  the  Slavs,  the  Arabs,  the  Greeks, 
and  the  Bretons.  What  is  now  France,  Ger- 
many, Belgium,  Holland,  Switzerland,  Spain,  and 
most  of  Italy  were  under  his  kingship.  He  was 
a  student,  an  architect,  a  bridge-builder,  though 
he  could  neither  read  nor  write,  and  even  began  a 
canal  which  was  to  connect  the  Danube  and  the 
Rhine,  and  thus  the  German  Ocean,  with  the 
Black  Sea.  He  is  one  of  many  monuments  to 
the  futility  of  technical  education  and  mere 
book-learning. 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    27 

The  Pope,  roughly  handled,  because  negli- 
gently protected,  by  the  Roman  emperors,  turns 
to  Charlemagne,  and  on  Christmas  Day  (800) 
places  a  crown  upon  his  head,  and  proclaims  him 
"Csesar  Augustus"  and  " Christianissimus  Rex." 
The  empire  of  Rome  is  to  be  born  again  with  this 
virile  German  warrior  at  its  head.  Just  a  thou- 
sand years  later,  another  insists  that  he  has  suc- 
ceeded to  the  title  by  right  of  conquest,  and  gives 
his  baby  son  the  title  of  "King  of  Rome,"  and 
just  a  thousand  years  after  the  death  of  Charle- 
magne, in  814,  Napoleon  retires  to  Elba.  There 
is  a  witchery  about  Rome  even  to-day,  and  an 
emperor  still  sits  imprisoned  there,  claiming  for 
himself  the  right  to  rule  the  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual world:  "sedet,  eternumque  sedebit  In- 
felix  Theseus." 

Louis,  called  "the  Pious,"  because  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  was  spent  in  mourning  his  out- 
rageous betrayal,  mutilation,  and  murder  of  his 
own  nephew,  whose  rivalry  he  feared,  succeeded 
his  father,  Charlemagne.  He  was  succeeded 
again  by  his  three  sons,  Lothair,  Pepin,  and 
Louis  by  his  first  wife,  and  Charles,  who  was  his 
favorite  son,  by  his  second  wife.  He  had  already 
divided  the  great  heritage  left  him  by  Charle- 
magne between  his  three  sons  Lothair,  Pepin, 
and  Louis;  but  now  he  wished  to  make  another 


28    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

division  into  four  parts,  to  make  room  for,  and 
to  give  a  kingdom  to,  his  son  Charles  by  his 
second  wife.  The  three  elder  sons  revolt  against 
their  father,  and  his  last  years  are  spent  in  vain 
attempts  to  reconcile  his  quarrelsome  children. 
At  his  death  war  breaks  out.  Pepin  dies,  leav- 
ing, however,  a  son  Pepin  to  inherit  his  king- 
dom of  Aquitaine.  Louis  and  Charles  attempt 
to  take  his  kingdom  from  him,  his  uncle  Lo- 
thair  defends  him,  and  at  the  great  battle  of 
Fontenay  (841)  Louis  and  Charles  defeat  Lo- 
thair.  Lothair  gains  the  adherence  of  the  Sax- 
ons, and  Charles  and  Louis  at  the  head  of  their 
armies  confirm  their  alliance,  and  at  Strasburg 
the  two  armies  take  the  oath  of  allegiance:  the 
followers  of  Louis  took  the  oath  in  German,  the 
followers  of  Charles  in  French,  and  this  oath, 
the  words  of  which  are  still  preserved,  is  the  ear- 
liest specimen  of  the  French  language  in  exist- 
ence. 

In  843  another  treaty  signed  at  Verdun,  be- 
tween the  two  brothers  Lothair  and  Louis  and 
their  half-brother  Charles,  separated  for  the  first 
time  the  Netherlands,  the  Rhine  country,  Bur- 
gundy, and  Italy,  which  became  the  portion  of 
Lothair;  all  Germany  east  of  this  territory,  which 
went  to  Louis ;  and  all  the  territory  to  the  west  of 
it,  which  went  to  Charles.  Germany  and  France, 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    29 

therefore,  by  the  Treaty  of  Verdun  in  843,  be- 
came distinct  kingdoms,  and  modern  geography 
in  Europe  is  born. 

From  the  death  of  Henry  the  Fowler,  in  936, 
down  to  the  nomination  of  Frederick  I  of  Bava- 
ria, sixth  Burgrave  of  Nuremberg,  to  be  Mar- 
grave of  Brandenburg,  in  1411,  the  history  of 
the  particular  Germany  we  are  studying  is 
swallowed  up  in  the  history  of  these  German 
tribes  of  central  Europe  and  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire.  It  is  in  these  years  of  the  seven  Cru- 
sades, from  1095  to  the  last  in  1248;  of  Frederick 
Barbarossa;  of  the  centuries-long  quarrel  be- 
tween theWelfs,or  Guelphs,and  the  Waiblingers, 
or  Ghibellines,  which  were  for  years  in  Italy, 
and  are  still  in  Germany,  political  parties;  of 
the  Hanseatic  League  of  the  cities  to  protect 
commerce  from  the  piracies  of  a  disordered  and 
unruled  country;  of  the  Dane  and  the  Nor- 
man descents  upon  the  coasts  of  France,  Ger- 
many, and  England,  and  of  their  burning,  kill- 
ing, and  carrying  into  captivity;  of  the  Saracens 
scouring  the  Mediterranean  coasts  and  sack- 
ing Rome  itself;  of  the  Wends  and  Czechs, 
Hungarian  bands  who  dashed  in  upon  the  east- 
ern frontiers  of  the  now  helpless  and  amorphous 
empire  of  Charlemagne,  all  the  way  from  the 
Baltic  to  the  Danube;  of  the  quarrel  between 


30    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Henry  IV  and  that  Jupiter  Ecclesiasticus,  Hilde- 
brand,  or  Gregory  VII,  who  has  left  us  his  biog- 
raphy in  the  single  phrase,  "To  go  to  Canossa"; 
of  Genghis  Khan  and  his  Mongol  hordes;  of  the 
long  fight  between  popes  and  emperors  over  the 
right  of  investiture;  of  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg;  of 
the  throwing  off  of  their  allegiance  to  the  Empire 
of  the  Kings  of  Burgundy,  Poland,  Hungary,  and 
Denmark;  of  the  settlement  of  the  question  of 
the  legal  right  to  elect  the  emperor  by  Charles  IV, 
who  fixed  the  power  in  the  persons  of  seven  rulers : 
the  King  of  Bohemia,  the  Count  Palatine  of  the 
Rhine,  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  the  Margraf  of 
Brandenburg,  and  the  three  Archbishops  of  May- 
ence,  Treves,  and  Cologne;  of  the  independence 
of  the  great  cities  of  northern  Italy;  of  Otto  the 
Great,  whose  first  wife  was  a  granddaughter  of 
Alfred  the  Great,  and  who  was  the  real  founder 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  in  the  sense  that  a 
German  prince  rules  over  both  Germany  and 
Italy  with  the  approval  of  the  Pope,  and  in  the 
sense  that  he,  a  duke  of  Saxony,  appropriates  the 
western  empire  (962),  goes  to  Rome,  delivers 
the  Pope,  subdues  Italy,  and  fixes  the  imperial 
crown  in  the  name  and  nation  of  Germany;  of 
the  beginning  of  that  hope  of  a  world-church  and 
a  world-state,  of  a  universal  church  and  a  uni- 
versal kingdom,  which  took  form  in  what  is 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    31 

known  as  the  Holy  Roman  Empire;  of  that 
greatest  of  all  forgeries,  the  Donation  of  Con- 
stantine  by  the  monk  Isidor,  discovered  and  re- 
vealed by  Cardinal  Nicolaus,  of  Cura,  in  which  it 
is  pretended  that  Constantine  handed  over  Rome 
to  the  Pope  and  his  successors  forever,  with  all 
the  power  and  privileges  of  the  Caesars,  and  of 
the  effects  of  this,  the  most  successful  lie  ever 
told  in  the  world,  during  the  seven  hundred 
years  it  was  believed:  it  is  in  these  years  of  tur- 
bulence and  change  that  one  must  trace  the 
threads  of  history,  from  the  first  appearance  of 
the  Germans,  down  to  the  time  when  what  is 
now  Prussia  became  a  frontier  post  of  the  empire 
under  the  rule  of  a  Hohenzollern. 

It  is,  perhaps,  of  all  periods  in  history,  the 
most  interesting  to  Americans,  for  then  and  there 
our  civilization  was  born.  Writing  of  the  con- 
quest of  the  British  Isles  by  the  Germans,  J.  R. 
Green  says:  "What  strikes  us  at  once  in  the  new 
England  is  this,  that  it  was  the  one  purely  Ger- 
man nation  that  rose  upon  the  wreck  of  Rome. 
In  other  lands,  in  Spain  or  Gaul  or  Italy,  though 
they  were  equally  conquered  by  German  peoples, 
religion,  social  life,  administrative  order,  still  re- 
mained Roman. "  The  roots  of  our  civilization, 
are  to  be  dug  for  in  those  days  when  the  German 
peoples  met  the  imperialism  and  the  Christian- 


ity  of  Rome,  and  absorbed  and  renewed  them. 
The  Roman  Empire,  tottering  on  a  foundation  of, 
it  is  said,  as  many  as  fifty  million  slaves  —  even 
a  poor  man  would  have  ten  slaves,  a  rich  man 
ten  or  twenty  thousand  —  and  overrun  with  the 
mongrel  races  from  Syria,  Greece,"  and  Africa, 
and  hiding  away  the  remnants  of  its  power  in 
the  Orient,  became  in  a  few  centuries  an  easy 
prey  to  our  ancestors  "of  the  stern  blue  eyes, 
the  ruddy  hair,  the  large  and  robust  bodies." 

"Caerula  quis  stupuit  lumina?  flavam 
Caesariem,  et  madido  torquentem  cornua  cirro? 
Nempe  quod  haec  illis  natura  est  omnibus  una," 

writes  Juvenal  of  their  resemblance  to  one  an- 
other. 

By  the  year  1411  long  strides  had  been  made 
toward  other  forms  of  social,  political,  religious, 
and  commercial  life,  due  to  the  German  grip 
upon  Europe.  Dante,  whose  grandmother  was  a 
Goth,  was  not  only  a  poet  but  a  fighter  for  free- 
dom, taking  a  leading  part  in  the  struggle  of  the 
Bianchi  against  the  Neri  and  Pope  Boniface,  was 
born  in  1265  and  died  in  1321;  Francis  of  As- 
sisi,  born  in  1182,  not  only  represented  a  demo- 
cratic influence  in  the  church,  but  led  the  earli- 
est revolt  against  the  despotism  of  money;  the 
movement  to  found  cities  and  to  league  cities  to- 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    33 

gether  for  the  furtherance  of  trade  and  industry, 
and  thus  to  give  rights  to  whole  classes  of  people 
hitherto  browbeaten  by  church  or  state  or  both, 
began  in  Italy;  and  the  alliance  of  the  cities  of 
the  Rhine,  and  the  Hansa  League,  date  from  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century;  the  dis- 
covery of  how  to  make  paper  dates  from  this 
time,  and  printing  followed;  the  revolt  of  the 
Albigenses  against  priestly  dominance  which 
drenched  the  south  of  France  in  blood  began  in 
the  twelfth  century;  slavery  disappeared  except 
in  Spain;  Wycliffe,  born  in  1324,  translated  the 
Gospels,  threw  off  his  allegiance  to  the  papacy, 
and  suffered  the  cheap  vengeance  of  having  his 
body  exhumed  and  its  ashes  scattered  in  the 
river  Swift;  Aquinas  and  Duns  Scotus  delivered 
philosophy  from  the  tyranny  of  theology;  Roger 
Bacon  (1214)  practically  introduced  the  study 
of  natural  science;  Magna  Charta  was  signed  in 
1215;  Marco  Polo,  whose  statue  I  have  seen 
among  those  of  the  gods,  in  a  certain  Chinese 
temple,  began  his  travels  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury; the  university  of  Bologna  was  founded  be- 
fore 1200  for  the  untrammelled  study  of  medicine 
and  philosophy;  Abelard,  who  died  in  1142,  rep- 
resented, to  put  it  pithily,  the  spirit  of  free  in- 
quiry in  matters  theological,  and  lectured  to 
thousands  in  Paris.  What  do  these  men  and 


34    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

movements  mean?  I  am  wofully  wrong  in  my 
ethnographical  calculations  if  these  things  do  not 
mean,  that  the  people  of  whom  Tacitus  wrote, 
"No  man  dictates  to  the  assembly;  he  may  per- 
suade but  cannot  command,"  were  shaping 
and  moulding  the  life  of  Europe,  with  their  pas- 
sionate love  of  individual  liberty,  with  their 
sturdy  insistence  upon  the  right  of  men  to  think 
and  work  without  arbitrary  interference.  Out 
of  this  furnace  came  constitutional  government 
in  England,  and  republican  government  in  Amer- 
ica. We  owe  the  origins  of  our  political  life  to 
the  influence  of  these  German  tribes,  with  their 
love  of  individual  freedom  and  their  stern  hatred 
of  meddlesome  rulers,  or  a  meddlesome  state  or 
legislature. 

Germany  had  no  literature  at  this  time. 
When  Froissart  was  writing  French  history,  and 
Joinville  his  delightful  chronicles;  when  Chau- 
cer and  Wycliffe  were  gayly  and  gravely  making 
play  with  the  monks  and  priests,  the  only  names 
known  in  Germany  were  those  of  the  mystics, 
Eckhart  and  Tauler.  When  the  time  came,  how- 
ever, Germany  was  defiantly  individualist  in 
Luther,  and  Protestantism  was  thoroughly  Ger- 
man. It  was  not  from  tales  of  the  great,  not 
from  knighthood,  chivalry,  or  their  roving  singer 
champions,  that  German  literature  came;  but 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    35 

from  the  fables  and  satires  of  the  people,  from 
Hans  Sachs  and  from  the  Luther  translation  of 
the  Bible.  This  is  roughly  the  setting  of  civili- 
zation, in  which  the  first  Hohenzollerns  found 
themselves  when  they  took  over  the  Mark  of 
Brandenburg,  in  the  early  years  of  the  fifteenth 
century. 

Here  is  a  list  of  them,  of  no  great  interest  in 
themselves,  but  showing  the  direct  descent 
down  to  the  present  time;  for  from  the  Peace 
of  Westphalia  (1648)  to  the  French  Revolution 
the  German  states  were  without  either  men  or 
measures,  except  Frederick  the  Great,  that  call 
for  other  than  dreary  comment: 

Frederick  I  of  Nuremberg— 1417 

Frederick  II 1440 

Albert  III 1470 

Johannlll 1476 

Joachim  I 1499 

Joachim  II 1535 

Johann  George 1571 

Joachim  Frederick 1598 

Johann  Sigismund  of  Poland  (Urst  Duke 

of  Prussia) 1608 

George  William 1619 

Frederick  William  (the  Great  Elector)     .  1640 
Frederick    III,    Frederick    I    of    Prussia 
(crowned   first   King   of   Prussia   in 

1701) 1657-1713 


36    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Frederick  William  I  (son  of  Frederick  I  of 

Prussia) 1688-1740 

Frederick  II  (the  Great)  (son  of  Fred- 
erick William  I) 1712-1786 

Frederick  William  II  (son  of  Augustus 
William,  brother  of  Frederick  the 
Great) 1744-1787 

Frederick  William  III  (son  of  Frederick 

William  II)        1770-1840 

Frederick  William  IV  (son  of  Frederick 
William  III,  1795-1861),  reigned 

1840-1861 

William  I  (son  of  Frederick  William  III, 
brother  of  Frederick  William  IV, 
1797-1888),  reigned  ....  1861-1888 

Frederick  III  (son  of  William  I,  1831- 
1888),  reigned  from  March  9  to  June 
15,  1888. 

William  II  (son  of  Frederick  III  and  Prin- 
cess Victoria  of  England),  born  Jan. 
27,  1859,  succeeded  Frederick  III  in 
1888. 

These  incidents,  names,  and  dates  are  mere 
whisps  of  history.  It  is  only  necessary  to  indi- 
cate that  to  articulate  this  skeleton  of  history, 
clothe  it  with  flesh,  and  give  it  its  appropriate 
arms  and  costumes  would  entail  the  putting  of 
all  mediaeval  European  history  upon  a  screen,  to 
deliver  oneself  without  apology  from  any  such 
task.  It  may  be  for  this  reason  that  there  is  no 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    37 

history  of  Germany  in  the  English  tongue,  that 
ranks  above  the  elementary  and  the  mediocre. 
There  is  a  masterly  and  scholarly  history  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  by  an  Englishman,  which  no 
student  of  Germany  may  neglect,  but  he  who 
would  trace  the  beginnings  of  Germany  from 
113  B.  C.  down  to  the  time  of  the  Great  Elector, 
1640,  must  be  his  own  guide  through  the  track- 
less deserts,  of  the  formation  into  separate  nations, 
of  modern  Europe.  It  is  even  with  misgivings 
that  the  student  picks  his  way  from  the  time  of 
the  Great  Elector  to  Bismarck,  and  to  modern 
Germany. 

The  Peace  of  Westphalia,  1648,  marks  the  end 
of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  and  finds  Germany 
with  a  population  reduced  from  sixteen  millions 
to  four  millions.  Famine  which  drove  men  and 
women  to  cannibalism,  bands  of  them  being 
caught  cooking  human  bodies  in  a  caldron  for 
food;  slaughter  that  drove  men  to  make  laws 
authorizing  every  man  to  have  two  wives,  and 
punishing  men  and  women  who  became  monks 
and  nuns;  lawlessness  that  bred  roving  bands  of 
murderers,  who  killed,  robbed,  and  even  ate  their 
victims,  demanded  a  ruler  of  no  little  vigor  to 
lead  his  people  back  to  civic,  moral,  and  material 
health.  The  Great  Elector  wrested  east  Prussia 
from  Poland,  he  defeated  and  drove  off  theSwedes, 


whom  Louis  XIV  had  drawn  into  an  alliance 
against  him,  he  travelled  from  end  to  end  of  his 
country,  seeking  out  the  problems  of  distress  and 
remedying  them  by  inducing  immigration  from 
Holland,  Switzerland,  and  the  north,  by  building 
roads,  bridges,  schools,  and  churches,  and  by  en- 
couraging planting,  trade,  and  commerce.  He 
built  the  Frederick  William  Canal  connecting  the 
Oder  and  the  Spree,  and  introduced  the  potato 
to  his  countrymen.  Germany  now  produces  in 
normal  years  fifteen  hundred  million  bushels  of 
potatoes.  The  splendid  equestrian  statue  of  the 
Great  Elector  on  the  long  bridge  at  Berlin,  is  a 
worthy  monument  to  the  first  great  Hohenzollern. 
When  Charles  II  of  Spain  died,  Louis  XIV, 
the  Emperor  Leopold  I  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  and  the  Elector  of  Bavaria,  all  three 
claimed  the  right  to  name  his  successor.  In 
the  war  that  followed  and  which  lasted  a  dozen 
years,  the  Emperor,  Holland,  England,  Portu- 
gal, the  Elector  of  Hanover,  and  the  Elector 
Frederick  III  of  Brandenburg,  the  son  of  the 
Great  Elector,  were  allied  against  France. 
Frederick,  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg,  was 
permitted  by  the  Emperor,  in  return  for  his 
services  at  this  time,  to  assume  the  title  of  King, 
and  he  crowned  himself  and  his  wife  Sophia 
Elizabeth,  at  Konigsberg,  King  and  Queen  of 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     39 

Prussia,  taking  the  title  of  Frederick  I  of  Prus- 
sia, January  18th,  1701. 

This  novus  homo  among  sovereigns  was  now  a 
fellow  king  with  the  rulers  of  England,  France, 
Denmark,  and  Sweden,  and  the  only  crowned 
head  in  the  empire,  except  the  Emperor  himself, 
and  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  who  had  been  chosen 
King  of  Poland  in  1697.  By  persistent  syco- 
phancy he  had  pushed  his  way  into  the  inner 
circle  of  the  crowned.  Those  who  have  picked 
social  locks  these  latter  days  by  similar  sycophan- 
cies,  by  losses  at  bridge  in  the  proper  quarter, 
by  suffering  sly  familiarities  to  their  women  folk, 
and  by  wearing  their  personal  and  family  dignity 
in  sole  leather,  may  know  something  of  the  hu- 
miliating experiences  of  this  new  monarch.  He 
was  a  feeble  fellow,  but  his  son  and  successor, 
Frederick  William  I, "  a  shrewd  but  brutal  boor," 
so  Lord  Rosebery  calls  him,  and  there  could  not 
be  a  better  judge,  amazed  Europe  by  his  taste 
for  collecting  tall  soldiers,  by  his  parsimony,  his 
kennel  manners  in  the  treatment  of  his  family 
and  his  subjects,  and  leaves  a  name  in  history 
as  the  first,  greatest,  and  the  unique  collector 
of  human  beings  on  a  Barnumesque  scale.  All 
known  collectors  of  birds,  beetles,  butterflies, 
and  beasts  accord  him  an  easy  supremacy,  for 
his  aggregation  of  colossal  grenadiers. 


40    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

It  is  temptingly  easy  to  be  epigrammatic,  per- 
haps witty,  at  the  expense  of  Frederick  William  I 
of  Prussia.  The  man,  however,  who  freed  the 
serfs;  who  readjusted  the  taxes;  who  insisted 
upon  industry  and  honesty  among  his  officials; 
who  proclaimed  liberty  of  conscience  and  of 
thought;  who  first  put  on,  to  wear  for  the  rest 
of  his  life,  the  uniform  of  his  army,  and  thus 
made  every  officer  proud  to  wear  the  uniform 
himself;  and  who  left  his  son  an  army  of  eighty 
thousand  men,  thoroughly  equipped  and  trained, 
and  an  overflowing  treasury,  may  not  be  dis- 
missed merely  with  anecdotes  of  his  eccentric 
brutality. 

Only  the  ignorant  and  the  envious,  nibble  at 
the  successes  of  other  men,  with  vermin  teeth 
and  venomous  tongue.  Those  people  who  can 
never  praise  anything  whole-heartedly  come  by 
their  cautious  censure  from  an  uneasy  doubt  of 
their  own  deserving.  The  contempt  of  Fred- 
erick William  I  for  learning  and  learned  men, 
left  him  leisure  for  matters  of  far  more  impor- 
tance to  his  kingdom  at  the  time.  His  ha- 
bitual roughness  to  his  son  was  due,  perhaps, 
to  the  fact  that  there  was  a  curious  strain  of 
effeminate  culture  in  the  man  who  deified  Vol- 
taire. Poor  Voltaire,  who  called  Shakespeare 
"  le  sauvage  ivre, "  or  to  quote  him  exactly :  "On 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    41 

croirait  que  cet  ouvrage  (Hamlet)  est  le  fruit 
de  1'imagination  d'un  sauvage  ivre,"  who  said 
that  Dante  would  never  be  read,  and  that  the 
comedies  of  Aristophanes  were  unworthy  of  pres- 
entation in  a  country  tavern !  One  is  tempted  to 
believe  that  the  father  was  a  man  of  robuster 
judgment  in  such  matters  than  the  son,  whose 
own  rather  mediocre  literary  equipment,  made 
him  the  easy  prey  of  that  acidulous  vestal  of  lit- 
erature, Voltaire.  However  that  may  be,  he  left 
a  useful  and  unexpected  legacy  to  his  son,  pro- 
vided, indeed,  the  sinews  for  the  making  of  a 
powerful  Prussian  kingdom. 

March  the  31st,  1740,  this  eccentric  miser  died, 
to  be  succeeded  by  his  son,  Frederick  II,  "the 
Great,"  then  twenty -eight  years  old.  Here  was 
a  surprise  indeed.  Of  these  German  kings  and 
princes  in  their  small  dominions  it  has  been  writ- 
ten: "And  these  magnates  all  aped  Louis  XIV 
as  their  model.  They  built  huge  palaces,  as 
like  Versailles  as  their  means  would  permit,  and 
generally  beyond  those  limits,  with  fountains 
and  avenues  and  dismally  wide  paths.  Even  in 
our  own  day  a  German  monarch  has  left,  fortu- 
nately unfinished,  an  accurate  Versailles  on  a 
damp  island  in  a  Bavarian  lake.  In  those  gran- 
diose structures  they  cherished  a  blighting  eti- 
quette, and  led  lives  as  dull  as  those  of  the  aged 
and  torpid  carp  in  their  own  stew-ponds.  Then, 


42    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

at  the  proper  season,  they  would  break  away  into 
the  forest  and  kill  game.  Moreover,  still  in 
imitation  of  their  model,  they  held,  as  a  neces- 
sary feature  in  the  dreary  drama  of  their  exist- 
ence, ponderous  dalliances  writh  unattractive  mis- 
tresses, in  whom  they  fondly  tried  to  discern  the 
charms  of  a  Montespan  or  a  La  Valliere.  This 
monotonous  programme,  sometimes  varied  by 
a  violent  contest  whether  they  should  occupy  a 
seat  with  or  without  a  back,  or  with  or  without 
arms,  represented  the  even  tenor  of  their  lives. " 
This  good  stock  was  evidently  lying  fallow, 
and  humanity  is  neither  dignified  nor  pleas- 
ant in  the  part  of  fertilizer.  Frederick  the 
Great,  it  should  be  remembered,  was  a  Prussian 
and  for  Prussia  only.  He  cared  no  more  about 
a  united  Germany  than  we  care  for  a  united 
America  to  include  Canada,  Mexico,  and  the  Ar- 
gentine. He  cared  no  more  for  Bavarians  and 
Saxons  than  for  Swedes  and  Frenchmen,  and, 
as  we  know,  he  was  utterly  contemptuous  of 
German  literature  or  the  German  language.  He 
redeemed  the  shallowness  and  the  torpidity  of 
those  other  mediocre  rulers  by  resisting,  and 
resisting  successfully,  for  what  must  have  been 
to  him  seven  very  long  years,  the  whole  force 
of  Austria  and  some  of  the  lesser  German  pow- 
ers, with  the  armies  of  Russia  and  France  back 
of  them. 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY     43 

He  had  a  turbulent  home  life;  his  father  on 
one  occasion  even  attempted  to  hang  him  with 
his  own  hands  with  the  cords  of  the  window  cur- 
tains, and  when  he  fled  from  home  he  captured 
him  and  proposed  to  put  him  to  death  as  a  de- 
serter, and  only  the  intervention  of  the  Kings 
of  Poland  and  Sweden  and  the  Emperor  of  Ger- 
many prevented  it.  His  accomplice,  however, 
was  summarily  and  mercilessly  put  to  death 
before  his  eyes.  There  is  no  illustration  in  all 
history,  of  such  a  successful  outcome  of  the  rod 
theory  in  education,  as  this  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  The  father  put  into  practice  what  Wes- 
ley preached:  " Break  their  wills  betimes,  what- 
ever it  costs;  break  the  will  if  you  would  not 
damn  the  child.  Let  a  child  from  a  year  old 
be  taught  to  fear  the  rod  and  to  cry  softly." 

The  meanness  and  cruelty,  the  parsimony  and 
the  eccentricities,  of  the  father  left  the  son  an 
army  of  eighty  thousand  troops,  troops  as  supe- 
rior to  other  troops  in  Europe  as  are  the  Japanese 
infantry  to-day,  to  the  Manchu  guards  that  pick 
the  weeds  in  the  court-yards  of  the  palace  at 
Mukden;  and  he  left  him,  too,  a  kingdom  with  no 
debts  and  an  overflowing  treasury.  It  is  seldom 
that  such  insane  vanities  leave  such  a  fair  estate 
and  an  heir  with  such  unique  abilities  for  its 
skilful  exploitation.  Of  Frederick's  wars  against 


44    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Austria,  against  France,  Russia,  Saxony,  Sweden, 
and  Poland ;  of  his  victories  at  Prague,  Leu  then, 
Rossbach,  and  Zorndorf ;  of  his  addition  of  Silesia 
and  Polish  Prussia  to  his  kingdom;  of  his  comical 
literary  love  affair  with  Voltaire;  of  his  brutal 
comments  upon  the  reigning  ladies  of  Russia 
and  France,  which  brought  upon  him  their  bit- 
ter hatred;  of  his  restoration  and  improvement 
of  his  country;  of  his  strict  personal  economy 
and  loyalty  to  his  own  people,  scores  of  volumes 
have  been  written.  The  hero-worshipper,  Car- 
lyle,  and  the  Jove  of  reviewers,  Macaulay,  have 
described  him,  and  many  minor  scribes  besides. 
It  is  said  of  his  victory  of  Rossbach,  in  1757, 
that  then  and  there  began  the  recreation  of  Ger- 
many, the  revival  of  her  political  and  intellectual 
life,  and  union  under  Prussia  and  Prussian  kings. 
Frederick  the  Great  deserves  this  particular  en- 
comium; for  as  Luther  freed  Germany,  and  all 
Christendom  indeed,  from  the  tyranny  of  tradi- 
tion, as  Lessing  freed  us  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
letter,  from  the  second-hand  and  half-baked 
Hellenism  of  a  Racine  and  a  Corneille,  so  Freder- 
ick the  Great  freed  his  countrymen  at  last  from 
the  puerile  slavery  to  French  fashions  and  tradi- 
tions, which  had  made  them  self-conscious  at 
home  and  ridiculous  abroad.  He  first  made  a 
Prussian  proud  to  be  a  Prussian. 


CRADLE  OF  MODERN  GERMANY    45 

This  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
Germany  saw  the  death  of  Lessing  in  1781,  the 
publication  of  Kant's  "Kritik  der  Reinen  Ver- 
nunft"  in  the  same  year,  and  the  death  of  the 
great  Frederick  in  1786.  These  names  mark  the 
physical  and  intellectual  coming  of  age  of  Ger- 
many. Lessing  died  misunderstood  and  feared 
by  the  card-board  literary  leaders  of  his  day, 
men  who  still  wrote  and  thought  with  the  geo- 
metrical instruments  handed  them  from  France ; 
Kant  attempted  to  push  philosophical  inquiry 
beyond  the  bounds  of  human  experience,  and 
Frederick  left  Prussia  at  last  not  ashamed  to  be 
Prussia.  Napoleon  was  eighteen  years  old  when 
Frederick  died,  and  he,  next  to  Bismarck,  did 
more  to  bring  about  German  unity  than  any 
other  single  force.  Unsuccessful  Charlemagne 
though  he  was,  he  without  knowing  it  blazed  the 
political  path  which  led  to  the  crowning  of  a 
German  emperor  in  the  palace  at  Versailles,  less 
than  a  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Frederick 
the  Great.  In  1797  at  Montebello,  Napoleon 
said :  "  If  the  Germanic  System  did  not  exist, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  create  it  expressly  for 
the  convenience  of  France." 


II 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  TO 
BISMARCK 

FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  died  in  1786, 
leaving  Prussia  the  most  formidable  mili- 
tary power  on  the  Continent.  In  finan- 
cial, law,  and  educational  matters  he  had  made 
his  influence  felt  for  good.  He  distributed  work- 
horses and  seed  to  his  impoverished  nobles;  he 
encouraged  silk,  cotton,  and  porcelain  industries ; 
he  built  the  Finow,  the  Planesche,  and  Brom- 
berger  Canals;  he  placed  a  tariff  on  meat,  ex- 
cept pork,  the  habitual  food  of  the  poor,  and 
spirits  and  tobacco  and  coffee  were  added  to  the 
salt  monopoly;  he  codified  the  laws,  which  we 
shall  mention  later;  he  aided  the  common 
schools,  and  in  his  day  were  built  the  opera-house, 
library,  and  university  in  Berlin,  and  the  new 
palace  of  Sans  Souci  at  Potsdam. 

Almost  exactly  one  hundred  years  after  the 
death  of  Frederick  the  Great,  there  ended  prac- 
tically, at  the  death  of  the  Emperor  William  I, 
in  1888,  the  political  career  of  the  man,  who  with 

46 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         47 

his  personally  manufactured  cement  of  blood 
and  iron,  bound  Germany  together  into  a  nation. 
The  middle  of  the  seventeenth,  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth,  and  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
centuries,  with  the  Great  Elector,  Frederick  the 
Great,  and  Bismarck  as  the  central  figures,  mark 
the  features  of  the  historical  landscape  of  Ger- 
many as  with  mile-stones. 

How  difficult  was  the  task  to  bring  at  last  an 
emperor  of  all  Germany  to  his  crowning  at  Ver- 
sailles, January  18,  1871,  and  how  mighty  the 
artificer  who  accomplished  the  work,  may  be 
learned  from  a  glance  at  the  political,  geograph- 
ical, and  patriotic  incoherence  of  the  land  that  is 
now  the  German  Empire. 

Germany  had  no  definite  national  policy  from 
the  death  of  Frederick  the  Great  till  the  reign 
of  Bismarck  began  in  1862.  Hazy  discussions 
of  a  confederation  of  princes,  of  a  Prussian  em- 
pire, of  lines  of  demarcation,  of  acquisitions  of 
German  territory,  were  the  phantoms  of  a  pol- 
icy, and  even  these  were  due  to  the  pressure  of 
Prussia. 

The  general  political  torpidity  is  surprisingly 
displayed,  when  one  remembers  that  Goethe 
(1749-1832),  who  Jived  through  the  French  Rev- 
olution, who  was  thirty-seven  years  old  when 
Frederick  the  Great  died,  and  who  lived  through 


48    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  whole  flaming  life  of  Napoleon,  was  scarcely 
more  stirred  by  the  political  features  of  the  time 
than  though  he  had  lived  in  Seringapatam.  He 
was  a  superlatively  great  man,  but  he  was  as 
parochial  in  his  politics  as  he  was  amateurish  in 
his  science,  as  he  was  a  mixture  of  the  coxcomb 
and  the  boor,  in  his  love  affairs.  Lessing,  who 
died  in  1781,  Klopstock,  who  died  in  1803,  Schil- 
ler, who  died  in  1805,  Kant,  who  died  in  1804, 
Hegel,  who  died  in  1831,  Fichte,  who  died  in 
1814,  Wolf,  who  died  in  1824,  "Jean  Paul" 
Friedrich  Richter,  who  died  in  1825,  Voss,  who 
died  in  1826,  Schelling,  who  died  in  1854,  the 
two  Schlegels,  August  Wilhelm  and  Frederick, 
who  died  in  1845  and  in  1829,  Jacob  Grimm, 
who  died  in  1863,  Herder,  Wieland,  Kotzebue, 
what  a  list  of  names!  What  a  blossoming  of 
literary  activity!  But  no  one  of  them,  these 
the  leaders  of  thought  in  Germany,  at  the  time 
when  the  world  was  approaching  the  birthday 
of  democracy  through  pain  and  blood,  no  one 
of  these  was  especially  interested  in  politics. 

There  was  theoretical  writing  about  freedom. 
Heine  mocked  at  his  countrymen  and  at  the 
world  in  general,  and  deified  Napoleon,  from  his 
French  mattress,  on  which  he  died,  in  1856, 
only  fifty-seven  years  old.  Fichte  ended  a  course 
of  lectures  on  Duty,  with  the  words:  "This 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         49 

course  of  lectures  is  suspended  till  the  end  of  the 
campaign.  We  shall  resume  if  our  country  be- 
come free,  or  we  shall  have  died  to  regain  our 
liberty."  But  Fichte  neither  resumed  nor  died! 
Herder  criticised  his  countrymen  for  their  slavish 
following  of  French  forms  and  models  in  their  lit- 
erature, as  in  their  art  and  social  life.  And  well 
he  might  thus  criticise,  when  one  remembers  how 
cramped  was  the  literary  vision  even  of  such  men 
as  Voltaire  and  Heine.  We  have  already  men- 
tioned some  of  Voltaire's  literary  judgments  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  and  Heine  ventured  to 
compare  Racine  to  Euripides !  No  wonder  that 
Germany  needed  schooling  in  taste,  if  such  were 
the  opinions  of  her  advisers.  Such  literary  can- 
ons as  these  could  only  be  accepted  by  minds  long 
inured  to  provincial,  literary,  and  social  slavery. 

Just  as  every  little  princeling  of  those  days  in 
Germany  took  Louis  XIV  for  his  model,  so  every 
literary  fledgling  looked  upon  Voltaire  as  a  god, 
and  modelled  his  style  upon  the  stiff  and  pom- 
pous verses  of  the  French  literary  men  of  that 
time. 

Not  even  to-day  has  Germany  escaped  from 
this  bondage.  In  Baden  three  words  out  of  ten 
that  you  hear  are  French,  and  the  German  wher- 
ever he  lives  in  Germany  still  invites  you  to 
Mittagessen  at  eight  p.  M.  because  he  has  no 
word  in  his  own  language  for  diner,  and  must 


50    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

still  say  anstdndiger  or  gebildeter  Mensch  for 
gentleman.  To  make  the  German  even  a  Ger- 
man in  speech  and  ideals  and  in  independence 
has  been  a  colossal  task.  One  wonders,  as  one 
pokes  about  in  odd  corners  of  Germany  even 
now,  whether  Herder's  caustic  contempt,  and 
Bismarck's  cavalry  boots,  have  made  every  Ger- 
man proud  to  be  a  German,  as  now  he  surely 
ought  to  be.  The  tribal  feeling  still  exists  there. 

Fichte's  lectures  on  Nationality  were  sup- 
pressed and  Fichte  himself  looked  upon  askance. 
The  Schlegels  spent  a  lifetime  in  giving  Germany 
a  translation  of  Shakespeare.  Hegel  wrote  the 
last  words  of  his  philosophy  to  the  sound  of  the 
guns  at  the  battle  of  Jena.  Goethe  writes  a 
paragraph  about  his  meeting  with  Napoleon. 
Metternich,  born  three  years  before  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution,  and  who  died  a  year  before  the 
battle  of  Bull  Run,  declared:  "The  cause  of  all 
the  trouble  is  the  attempt  of  a  small  faction  to 
introduce  the  sovereignty  of  the  people  under 
the  guise  of  a  representative  system." 

If  this  was  the  attitude  of  the  intellectual 
nobility  of  the  time,  what  are  we  to  suppose  that 
Messrs.  Muller  and  Schultze  and  Fischer  and 
Kruger,  the  small  shop-keepers  and  others  of 
their  ilk,  and  their  friends  thought?  Even  forty 
years  later  Friedrich  Hebbel,  in  1844,  paid  a 
visit  to  the  Industrial  Exposition  in  Paris.  He 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         51 

writes  in  his  diary:  "Alle  diese  Dinge  sind  mir 
nicht  allein  gleichgiiltig ;  sie  sind  mir  wider- 
wartig."  Germany  had  not  awakened  even 
then  to  any  wide  popular  interest  in  the  world 
that  was  doing  things.  As  Voltaire  phrased 
it,  France  ruled  the  land,  England  the  sea, 
and  Germany  the  clouds,  even  as  late  as  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  This  is  the 
more  worth  noting,  as  giving  a  peg  upon  which 
to  hang  Germany's  astounding  progress  since 
that  time.  Even  as  late  as  Bismarck's  day  he 
complained  of  the  German:  "It  is  as  a  Prus- 
sian, a  Hanoverian,  a  Wurtemberger,  a  Bava- 
rian, or  a  Hessian,  rather  than  as  a  German, 
that  he  is  disposed  to  give  unequivocal  proof  of 
patriotism."  The  present  ambitious  German 
Emperor  said,  in  1899,  at  Hamburg:  "The  slug- 
gishness shown  by  the  German  people  in  inter- 
esting, themselves  in  the  great  questions  moving 
the  world,  and  in  arriving  at  a  political  under- 
standing of  those  questions,  has  caused  me  deep 
anxiety. "  What  kind  of  material  had  the  nation- 
makers  to  work  with !  What  a  long,  disappoint- 
ing task  it  must  have  been  to  light  these  people 
into  a  blaze  of  patriotism!  In  those  days  Amer- 
ica, though  the  population  of  the  American  colo- 
nies was  only  eleven  hundred  and  sixty  thousand 
in  1750,  talked,  wrote,  and  fought  politics.  The 
outstanding  personalities  of  the  time  were  patri- 


52    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ots,  soldiers,  politicians,  not  a  dreamer  among 
them. 

England  was  so  nonchalantly  free  already, 
that  the  betting-book  at  White's  Club  records 
that,  "Lord  Glengall  bets  Lord  Yarmouth  one 
hundred  guineas  to  five  that  Buonaparte  returns 
to  Paris  before  Beau  Brummel  returns  to  Lon- 
don!" Burke  and  Pitt,  and  Fox  and  North,  and 
Canning  might  look  after  politics;  Hargreaves 
and  Crompton  would  take  care  to  keep  English 
industries  to  the  fore,  and  Watt,  and  the  great 
canal-builder  Brindley,  would  solve  the  problem 
of  distributing  coal;  their  lordships  cracked 
their  plovers'  eggs,  unable  to  pronounce  even  the 
name  of  a  single  German  town  or  philosopher, 
and  showed  their  impartial  interest,  much  as 
now  they  do,  in  contemporary  history,  by  back- 
ing their  opinions  with  guineas,  with  the  odds 
on  Caesar  against  the  "Beau." 

Weimar  was  a  sunny  little  corner  where 
poetry  and  philosophy  and  literature  were 
hatched,  well  out  of  reach  of  the  political  storms 
of  the  time.  The  Grand  Duke  of  Sachsen- 
Weimar-Eisenach  with  his  tiny  court,  his  Fal- 
staffian  army,  his  mint  and  his  customs-houses, 
with  his  well-conducted  theatre  and  his  suite  of 
litterateurs,  was  one  of  three  hundred  rulers  in 
the  Germany  of  that  time. 

The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  consisting,  in  Na- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK        53 

poleon's  time,  of  Austria,  Prussia,  and  a  mass  of 
minor  states,  these  last  grouped  together  under 
the  name  of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  and 
wholly  under  French  influence,  lasted  one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  and  fifty-eight  years,  or  from 
Caesar's  victory  of  Pharsalia  down  to  August  the 
1st,  1806,  when  Napoleon  announced  to  the  Diet 
that  he  no  longer  recognized  it. 

This  institution  had  no  political  power,  was 
merely  a  theoretical  political  ring  for  the  theoret- 
ical political  conflicts  of  German  agitators  and 
dreamers,  and  was  composed  of  the  representa- 
tives of  this  tangle  of  powerless,  but  vain  and  self- 
conscious  little  states.  This  Holy  Roman  Em- 
pire, with  an  Austrian  at  its  head,  and  aided  by 
France,  strove  to  prevent  the  development  of  a 
strong  German  state  under  the  leadership  of  Prus- 
sia. After  Napoleon's  day  it  became  a  struggle 
between  Prussia  and  Austria.  Austria  had  only 
eight  out  of  thirty-six  million  German  population, 
while  Prussia  was  practically  entirely  German,  and 
Prussia  used  her  army,  politics,  and  commerce  to 
gain  control  in  Germany.  Even  to-day  Austria- 
Hungary  contains  the  most  varied  conglomeration 
of  races  of  any  nation  in  the  world.  Austria  has 
26,000,000  inhabitants,  of  whom  9,000,000  are 
Germans,  1,000,000  Italians  and  Rumanians, 
6,000,000  Bohemians  and  Slovacs,  8,000,000 
Poles  and  Ruthenians,  2,000,000  Slovenes  and 


54    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Croatians.  Of  the  19,000,000  of  Hungary  there 
are  9,000,000  Magyars,  2,000,000  Germans, 
2,500,000  Slovacs  and  Ruthenians,  3,000,000  Ru- 
manians, and  nearly  3,000,000  Southern  Slavs. 

Weimar  was  one  of  the  three  hundred  capitals 
of  this  limp  empire,  with  tariffs,  stamps,  coins, 
uniforms,  customs,  gossip,  interests,  and  a  sov- 
ereign of  its  own.  When  Bismarck  undertook 
the  unifying  of  the  customs  tariffs  of  Germany, 
there  were  even  then  fifteen  hundred  different 
tariffs  in  existence! 

Weimar  had  its  salon,  its  notables:  Goethe, 
Schiller,  Wieland,  Frau  von  Stein,  Dr.  Zimmer- 
mann  as  a  valued  correspondent;  its  Grand  Duke 
Karl  August  and  his  consort;  Herder,  who  jeal- 
ous of  the  renown  of  Goethe,  and  piqued  at  the 
insufficient  consideration  he  received,  soon  de- 
parted, to  return  only  when  the  Grand  Duchess 
took  him  under  her  wing  and  thus  satisfied  his 
morbid  pride;  its  love  affair,  for  did  not  the 
beautiful  Frau  von  Werthern  leave  her  husband, 
carry  out  a  mock  funeral,  and,  heralded  as  dead, 
elope  to  Africa  with  Herr  von  Einsiedel?  But 
Weimar  was  as  far  away  from  what  we  now 
agree  to  look  upon  as  the  great  events  of  the 
day,  as  were  Lords  Glengall  and  Yarmouth  at 
White's,  in  Saint  James's. 

It  requires  imagination  to  put  Goethe  and 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         55 

Schiller  and  Wieland  in  the  bow  window  at 
White's,  and  to  place  Lords  Glengall  and  Yar- 
mouth in  Frau  von  Stein's  drawing-room  in 
Weimar;  but  the  discerning  eye  which  can  see 
this  picture,  knows  at  a  glance  why  England  mis- 
understands Germany  and  Germany  misunder- 
stands England.  For  White's  is  White's  and 
Weimar  is  Weimar,  and  one  is  British  and  one 
is  German  as  much  now  as  then !  In  the  one  the 
winner  of  the  Derby  is  of  more  importance  than 
any  philosopher;  in  the  other,  philosophers,  poets, 
professors,  and  playwrights  are  almost  as  well 
known,  as  the  pedigrees  of  the  yearlings  to  be 
sold  at  Newmarket,  are  known  at  White's. 
They  still  have  plover's  eggs  early  in  the  season 
at  White's,  and  they  still  recognize  the  subtle 
distinction  there  between  "port  wine"  and 
"port";  while  in  Weimar  nobody,  unless  it  be 
the  duke,  even  boils  his  sauerkraut  in  white 
wine ! 

One  could  easily  write  a  chapter  on  Weimar 
and  its  self-satisfied  social  and  literary  activi- 
ties. There  were  three  hundred  or  more  capitals 
of  like  complexion  and  isolation:  some  larger, 
some  smaller,  none  perhaps  with  such  a  splendid 
literary  setting,  but  all  indifferent  with  the  in- 
difference of  distant  relatives  who  seldom  see  one 
another,  when  the  French  Revolution  exploded 


56    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

its  bomb  at  the  gates  of  the  world's  habits  of 
thought. 

No  intelligent  man  ever  objected  to  the  French 
Revolution  because  it  stood  for  human  rights, 
but  because  it  led  straight  to  human  wrongs. 
The  dream  was  angelic,  but  the  nightmare  in 
which  it  ended  was  devilish.  The  French  Rev- 
olution was  the  most  colossal  disappointment 
that  humanity  has  ever  had  to  bear. 

More  than  the  demagogue  gives  us  credit  for, 
are  the  great  majority  of  us  eager  to  help  our 
neighbors.  The  trouble  is  that  the  demagogue 
thinks  this,  the  most  difficult  of  all  things,  an 
easy  task.  God  and  Nature  are  harsh  when 
they  are  training  men,  and  we,  alas,  are  soft, 
hence  most  of  our  failures.  Correction  must 
be  given  with  a  rod,  not  with  a  sop.  There  lies 
all  the  trouble. 

The  political  and  philanthropic  wise  men  were 
setting  out  for  the  manger  and  the  babe,  their 
eyes  on  the  star,  laden  with  gifts,  when  they 
were  met  by  a  whiff  of  grape-shot  from  the  guns 
commanded  by  a  young  Corsican  genius.  The 
French  Revolution  found  us  all  sympathetic, 
but  making  men  of  equal  height  by  lopping  off 
their  heads;  making  them  free  by  giving  no  one 
a  chance  to  be  free;  making  them  fraternal  by 
insisting  that  all  should  be  addressed  by  the  same 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         57 

title  of,  "  citizen,"  was  soon  seen  to  be  the  method 
of  a  political  nursery. 

It  was  no  fault  of  the  French  Revolution  that 
it  was  no  revolution  at  all,  in  any  political  sense. 
Men  maddened  by  oppression  hit,  kick,  bite,  and 
burn.  They  are  satisfied  to  shake  the  burden  of 
the  moment  off  their  backs,  even  though  the  bur- 
den they  take  on  be  of  much  the  same  character. 
"It  is  perfectly  possible,  to  revive  even  in  our 
own  day  the  fiscal  tyranny  which  once  left  even 
European  populations  in  doubt  whether  it  was 
worth  while  preserving  life  by  thrift  and  toil. 
You  have  only  to  tempt  a  portion  of  the  popula- 
tion into  temporary  idleness,  by  promising  them 
a  share  in  a  fictitious  hoard  lying  in  an  imaginary 
strong-box  which  is  supposed  to  contain  all  hu- 
man wealth.  You  have  only  to  take  the  heart  out 
of  those  who  would  willingly  labor  and  save,  by 
taxing  them  ad  misericordiam  for  the  most  laud- 
able philanthropic  objects.  For  it  makes  not 
the  smallest  difference  to  the  motives  of  the 
thrifty  and  industrious  part  of  mankind  whether 
their  fiscal  oppressor  be  an  Eastern  despot,  or  a 
feudal  baron,  or  a  democratic  legislature,  and 
whether  they  are  taxed  for  the  benefit  of  a  cor- 
poration called  Society  or  for  the  advantage  of 
an  individual  styled  King  or  Lord,"  writes  Sir 
Henry  Maine.  In  short  it  matters  not  in  the 


58    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

least  what  you  baptize  oppression,  so  long  as  it 
is  oppression,  or  whether  you  call  your  tyrant 
"Jim"  or  "My  Lord,"  so  long  as  he  is  a  tyrant. 
Many  people  are  slowly  awakening  to  the  fact 
in  England  and  in  America,  that  plain  citizen 
"Jim"  can  be  a  most  merciless  tyrant  in  spite 
of  his  unpretentious  name  and  title.  No  royal 
tyrant  ever  dared  to  attempt  to  gain  his  ends 
by  dynamiting  innocent  people,  as  did  the  trades- 
unionists  at  Los  Angeles,  or  to  starve  a  whole 
population  as  did  the  trades-unionists  in  Lon- 
don. We  have  not  escaped  tyranny  by  chang- 
ing its  name.  The  idea  of  the  Contrat  Social 
and  of  all  its  dilutions  since,  has  been  that  indi- 
viduals go  to  make  up  society,  and  that  society 
under  the  name  of  the  state  must  take  charge 
of  those  individuals.  The  French  Revolution 
was  a  failure  because  it  fell  back  upon  that  tire- 
some and  futile  philosophy  of  government  which 
had  been  that  of  Louis  XIV.  Louis  XIV  took 
care  of  the  individual  units  of  the  state  by  ex- 
ploiting them.  He  was  a  sound  enough  Socialist 
in  theory.  France  gained  nothing  of  much  value 
along  the  lines  of  political  philosophy. 

Whether  it  is  Louis  XIV  who  says  "1'etat  c'est 
moi"  or  the  citizens  banded  together  in  a  state, 
who  claim  that  the  functions  of  the  state  are  to 
meddle  with  the  business  of  every  man,  matters 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         59 

little.  It  is  the  same  socialistic  philosophy  at 
bottom,  and  it  has  produced  to-day  a  France  of 
thirty-eight  millions  of  people  pledged  to  steril- 
ity, one  million  of  whom  are  state  officials  super- 
intending the  affairs  of  the  others  at  a  cost,  in 
salaries  alone,  of  upward  of  five  hundred  million 
dollars  a  year. 

In  no  political  or  philosophical  sense  was  the 
French  Revolution  a  revolution  at  all.  It  was 
a  change  of  administration  and  leaders,  but  not 
a  change  of  political  theory.  The  French  Revo- 
lution put  the  state  in  impartial  supremacy  over 
all  classes  by  destroying  exemptions  claimed  by 
the  nobility  and  the  clergy,  and  thus  extended 
the  power  of  the  state.  The  English  Revolution 
without  bloodshed  reduced  the  power  of  the 
state,  not  for  the  advantage  of  any  class,  but 
for  individual  liberty  and  local  self-government. 
We  Americans  are  the  political  heirs  of  the  latter, 
not  of  the  former,  revolution. 

Germany  was  stirred  slightly  to  hope  for  free- 
dom, but  stirred  mightily  to  protest  against 
anarchy  later.  These  were  the  two  influences 
from  the  French  Revolution  that  affected  Ger- 
many, and  they  were  so  contradictory  that  Ger- 
many herself  was  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  in 
a  mixed  mood.  One  influence  enlivened  the 
theoretical  democrat,  and  the  other  sent  the  ar- 


60     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

mies  of  all  Europe  post-haste  to  save  what  was 
left  of  orderly  government  in  France. 

But  Prussia  was  not  what  she  had  been  under 
Frederick  the  Great.  Frederick  was  more  Louis 
XIV  than  Louis  XIV  himself.  The  economic 
and  political  errors  of  the  French  Revolution 
found  their  best  practical  exponent  in  Frederick 
the  Great.  In  the  introduction  to  his  code  of 
laws  we  have  already  mentioned  are  the  words: 
'The  head  of  the  state,  to  whom  is  intrusted  the 
duty  of  securing  public  welfare,  which  is  the 
whole  aim  of  society,  is  authorized  to  direct  and 
control  all  the  actions  of  individuals  toward  this 
end."  Further  on  the  same  code  reads:  "It  is 
incumbent  upon  the  state  to  see  to  the  feeding, 
employment,  and  payment  of  all  those  who  can- 
not support  themselves,  and  who  have  no  claim 
to  the  help  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,  or  to  the  help 
of  the  commune:  it  is  necessary  to  provide  such 
persons  with  work  which  is  suitable  to  their 
strength  and  their  capacity." 

When  Frederick  died  he  left  Prussia  in  the  grip 
of  this  enervating  pontifical  socialism,  which  al- 
ways everywhere  ends  by  palsying  the  individ- 
ual, and  through  the  individual  the  state,  with 
the  blight  of  demagogical  and  theoretical  legisla- 
tion. The  fine  army  grew  pallid  and  without 
spirit,  the  citizens  lost  their  individual  pride,  the 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         61 

nation  as  a  whole  lost  its  vigor,  and  when  Napo- 
leon marched  into  Berlin,  he  remarked  that  the 
country  hardly  seemed  worth  conquering. 

The  century  from  the  death  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  in  1786,  to  the  death  of  William  the  First, 
in  1888,  includes,  in  a  convenient  period  to  re- 
member: the  downfall  of  Frederick's  patriotic 
edifice;  the  apathy  and  impotency  that  followed 
upon  the  breaking  up  of  the  bureaucracy  he  had 
welded  into  efficiency;  the  shuffling  of  the  Ger- 
man states  by  Napoleon  as  though  they  were 
the  pack  of  cards  in  a  great  political  game;  a  re- 
vival of  patriotism  in  Prussia  after  floggings  and 
insults  that  were  past  bearing;  the  jealousies 
and  enmities  of  the  various  states,  the  betrayal 
of  one  by  the  other,  and  finally  the  struggle 
between  Austria  and  Prussia  to  decide  upon  a 
leader  for  all  Germany;  and  at  last  the  war 
against  France,  1870-71,  which  was  to  make  it 
clear  to  the  world  that  Germany  had  been  Prus- 
sianized into  an  empire. 

Frederick  William  II,  the  nephew  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  who  succeeded  him,  was  King  of 
Prussia  from  1786  to  1797.  Frederick  William 
III,  his  son,  and  the  husband  of  the  beautiful 
and  patriotic  Queen  Louisa,  was  King  of  Prus- 
sia from  1797  to  1840.  Frederick  William  IV, 
a  loquacious,  indiscreet,  loose-lipped  sovereign, 


62    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  moist  intellect  and  mythical  delusions,  was 
King  of  Prussia  from  1840  to  1857,  when  his 
mental  condition  made  his  retirement  necessary, 
and  he  was  succeeded  by  his  brother,  Frederick 
William  Ludwig,  first  as  regent,  then  as  king  in 
1861,  known  to  us  as  that  admirable  King  and 
Emperor,  William  I,  who  died  in  1888. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  characteristic  of 
these  sovereigns,  to  those  of  us  who  look  upon 
Germany  to-day  as  autocratically  governed  in 
fact  and  by  tradition,  is  their  willing  surrender  to 
the  people,  on  every  occasion  when  the  demand 
has  been,  even  as  little  insistent  as  the  German 
demand  has  been.  In  the  case  of  Frederick  Wil- 
liam IV,  his  claim,  at  least  in  words,  upon  his 
divine  rights  as  a  sovereign  was  the  mark  of  a 
wavering  confidence  in  himself.  He  was  not  sat- 
isfied with  a  rational  sanction  for  his  authority, 
but  was  forever  assuring  his  subjects  that  God 
had  pronounced  for  him;  much  as  men  of  low 
intelligence  attempt  to  add  vigor  to  their  state- 
ments by  an  oath.  "I  hold  my  crown,"  he  said, 
"by  the  favor  of  God,  and  I  am  responsible  to 
Him  for  every  hour  of  my  government. "  Much 
under  the  influence  of  the  two  scholars  Niebuhr 
and  Ranke,  he  hated  the  ideas  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  dreamed  of  an  ideal  Christian 
state  like  that  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  was  cari- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         63 

catured  by  the  journals  of  the  day,  and  laughed 
at  by  the  wits,  including  Heine,  and  pictured  as 
a  king  with  "Order"  on  one  hand,  "Counter- 
order"  on  the  other,  and  "Disorder"  on  his  fore- 
head. 

Though  Frederick  William  II  marched  into 
France  in  1792,  to  support  the  French  monarchy, 
neither  his  army  nor  his  people  were  prepared  or 
fit  for  this  enterprise,  and  he  soon  retired.  In 
1793,  Prussia  joined  Russia  in  a  second  partition 
of  Poland,  but  in  1795,  angry  with  what  was 
considered  the  double  dealing  of  Austria  and 
Russia,  Prussia  concluded  a  peace  with  France, 
the  treaty  of  Basle  was  signed  in  1795,  and  for 
ten  years  Prussia  practically  took  no  part  in  the 
Napoleonic  wars. 

Napoleon  took  over  the  lands  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Rhine,  took  away  the  freedom  of  forty- 
eight  towns,  leaving  only  Hamburg,  Bremen, 
Frankfort,  Augsburg,  and  Nuremberg,  and  in 
1803  he  took  Hanover.  Later,  in  1805,  Bavaria, 
Wiirtemberg,  and  Baden  aided  Napoleon  to 
fight  the  alliance  against  him  of  Austria,  Eng- 
land, Russia,  and  Sweden.  In  that  same  year  the 
Electors  of  Wiirtemberg  and  Bavaria  were  made 
kings  by  Napoleon.  In  1806  Bavaria,  Baden, 
Wiirtemberg,  and  Hessen  seceded  from  the  Ger- 
man Empire,  formed  themselves  into  the  Con- 


64    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

federation  of  the  Rhine,  and  acknowledged  Na- 
poleon as  their  protector.  In  1806  Francis  II, 
Emperor  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  resigned, 
and  there  was  neither  an  empire  nor  an  emperor 
of  Germany,  nor  was  there  a  Germany  of  united 
interests. 

In  1806  Frederick  William  III,  driven  by  the 
grossest  insults  to  his  country  and  to  his  wife, 
finally  declared  war  against  France;  there  fol- 
lowed the  battle  of  Jena,  in  which  the  Germans 
were  routed,  and  in  that  same  year  Napoleon 
marched  into  Berlin  unopposed.  In  1807  the 
Russian  Emperor  was  persuaded  to  make  peace, 
and  Prussia  without  her  ally  was  helpless.  The 
Peace  of  Tilsit,  in  July,  1807,  deprived  Prussia 
of  the  whole  of  the  territory  between  the  Elbe 
and  the  Rhine,  and  this  with  Brunswick,  Hes- 
se-Cassel,  and  part  of  Hanover  was  dubbed 
the  Kingdom  of  Westphalia,  and  Napoleon's 
youngest  brother  Jerome  was  made  king.  The 
Polish  territory  of  Prussia  was  given  to  the 
Elector  of  Saxony,  who  was  also  rewarded  for 
having  deserted  Prussia  after  the  battle  of  Jena 
by  being  made  a  king.  Prussia  was  further 
required  to  reduce  her  army  to  forty-two  thou- 
sand men. 

It  is  neither  a  pretty  nor  an  inspiriting  story, 
this  of  the  mangling  of  Germany  by  Napoleon; 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         65 

of  the  German  princes  bribed  by  kingly  crowns 
from  the  hands  of  an  ancestorless  Corsican;  but 
it  all  goes  to  show  how  far  from  any  sense  of 
common  aims  and  duties,  how  far  from  the 
united  Vaterland  of  to-day,  was  the  Germany  of 
a  hundred  years  ago.  It  adds,  too,  immeasur- 
ably to  the  laurels  of  the  man  who  produced  the 
present  German  Empire  out  of  his  own  pocket, 
and  stood  as  chief  sponsor  at  its  christening  at 
Versailles  in  1871. 

This  Prussia  that  sent  twenty  thousand  troops 
to  aid  Napoleon  against  Russia,  and  which  dur- 
ing the  retreat  from  Moscow  went  over  bodily 
to  the  enemy;  this  Prussia  whose  vacillating 
king  simpered  with  delight  at  a  kind  word  from 
Napoleon,  and  shivered  with  dismay  at  a  harsh 
one;  this  army  with  its  officers  as  haughty  as 
they  were  incapable,  and  its  men  only  prevented 
from  wholesale  desertion  by  severe  punishment, 
an  army  rotten  at  the  core,  with  a  coat  of  varnish 
over  its  worm-eaten  fabric;  this  Prussia  humil- 
iated and  disgraced  after  the  battle  of  Jena,  in 
1806,  in  seven  years'  time  came  into  its  own 
again.  Vom  Stein,  Scharnhorst,  the  son  of  a 
Hanoverian  peasant,  and  Hardenberg  put  new 
life  into  the  state.  At  Waterloo  the  pummelled 
squares  of  red-coats  were  relieved  by  these  Prus- 
sians, and  Bliicher,  or  "Old  Marschall  Vorwarts" 


66    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

as  he  was  called,  redeemed  his  countrymen's 
years  of  effeminate  lassitude  and  vacillation. 

"Such  was  Vorwarts,  such  a  fighter, 
Such  a  lunging,  plunging  smiter, 
Always  stanch  and  always  straight, 
Strong  as  death  for  love  or  hate, 
Always  first  in  foulest  weather, 
Neck  or  nothing,  hell  for  leather, 
Through  or  over,  sink  or  swim, 
Such  was  Vorwarts — here's  to  him!" 

Napoleon  goes  to  Saint  Helena  and  dies  in  1821. 
What  he  did  for  Germany  was  to  prove  to  her 
how  impossible  was  a  cluster  of  jealous,  malicious 
provincial  little  state  governments  in  the  heart 
of  Europe,  protecting  themselves  from  falling 
apart  by  the  ancient  legislative  scaffolding  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  He  squeezed  three  hun- 
dred states  into  thirty-eight,  and  the  very  year 
of  Waterloo,  on  April  the  1st,  a  German  Napo- 
leon was  born  who  was  to  further  squeeze  these 
states  into  what  is  known  to-day  as  the  German 
Empire. 

The  Congress  of  Vienna  was  a  meeting  of  the 
European  powers  to  redistribute  the  possessions, 
that  Napoleon  had  scattered  as  bribes  and  re- 
wards among  his  friends,  relatives,  and  enemies, 
so  far  as  possible,  among  their  rightful  owners. 

From  the  island  of  Elba,  off  the  coast  of 
Tuscany,  Napoleon  looked  on  while  the  allies 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         67 

quarrelled  at  this  Congress  of  Vienna.  Prussia 
claimed  the  right  to  annex  Saxony;  Russia  de- 
manded Poland,  and  against  them  were  leagued 
England,  Austria,  and  France,  France  repre- 
sented by  the  Mephistophelian  Talleyrand,  who 
strove  merely  to  stir  the  discord  into  another 
war.  In  the  midst  of  their  deliberations  word 
came  that  the  wolf  was  in  the  fold  again.  Na- 
poleon was  riding  to  Paris,  through  hysterical 
crowds  of  French  men  and  women,  eager  for 
another  throw  against  the  world,  if  their  Little 
Corporal  were  there  to  shake  the  dice  for  them. 
He  had  another  throw  and  lost.  The  French 
Revolution  in  1789,  followed  by  the  insurrection 
of  all  Europe  against  that  strange  gypsy  child 
of  the  Revolution,  Napoleon,  from  1807-1815, 
ended  at  last  at  Waterloo.  This  lover,  who  won 
whole  nations  as  other  men  win  a  maid  or  two; 
this  ruler,  who  had  popes  for  handmaidens  and 
gave  kingdoms  as  tips,  who  dictated  to  kings 
preferably  from  the  palaces  of  their  own  capi- 
tals; this  fortunate  demon  of  a  man,  who  had 
escaped  even  Mile.  Montausier,  was  safely  dis- 
posed of  at  Saint  Helena,  and  the  ordinary  ways 
of  mortals  had  their  place  in  the  world  again. 

The  Congress  of  Vienna  reassembled,  and  the 
readjustment  of  the  map  of  Europe  began  over 
again.  Prussia  is  given  back  what  had  been 


G8     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

taken  away  from  her.  A  German  confederation 
was  formed  in  1815  to  resist  encroachments,  but 
with  no  definite  political  idea,  and  its  diet,  to 
which  Prussia,  Austria,  and  the  other  smaller 
states  sent  representatives,  became  the  laughing- 
stock of  Europe.  Jealous  bickerings  and  insist- 
ence upon  silly  formalities  paralyzed  legisla- 
tion. Lawyers  and  others  who  presented  their 
claims  before  this  assembly  from  1806-1816  were 
paid  in  1843!  The  liquidation  of  the  debts  of 
the  Thirty  Years'  War  was  made  after  two 
hundred  years,  in  1850!  The  laws  for  the  mil- 
itary forces  were  finally  agreed  upon  in  1821, 
and  put  in  force  in  1840! 

There  were  three  principal  forms  of  govern- 
ment among  these  states :  first,  Absolutist,  where 
the  ruler  and  his  officials  governed  without  ref- 
erence to  the  people,  as  in  Prussia  and  Austria; 
second,  those  who  organized  assemblies  (Land- 
stande),  where  no  promises  were  made  to  the 
people,  but  where  the  nobles  and  notables  were 
called  together  for  consultation;  and  third,  a  sort 
of  constitutional  monarchy  with  a  written  con- 
stitution and  elected  representatives,  but  with 
the  ruler  none  the  less  supreme.  One  of  the  first 
rulers  to  grant  such  a  constitution  to  his  people 
was  the  Grand  Duke  who  presided  over  the 
little  court  at  Weimar. 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         69 

The  mass  of  the  people  were  wholly  indiffer- 
ent. The  intellectuals  were  divided  among  them- 
selves. The  schools  and  universities  after  1818 
form  associations  and  societies,  the  Burschen- 
schaft,  for  example,  and  in  a  hazy  professorial 
fashion  talk  and  shout  of  freedom.  They  were 
of  those  passionate  lovers  of  liberty,  more  intent 
on  the  dower  than  on  the  bride;  willing  to  talk 
and  sing  and  to  tell  the  world  of  their  own  de- 
serts, but  with  little  iron  in  their  blood. 

When  a  real  man  wants  to  be  free  he  fights,  he 
does  not  talk;  he  takes  what  he  wants  and  asks 
for  it  afterward;  he  spends  himself  first  and 
affords  it  afterward.  These  dreamy  gentlemen 
could  never  make  the  connection  between  their 
assertions  and  their  actions.  They  were  as  in- 
consistent, as  a  man  who  sees  nothing  unreason- 
able in  circulating  ascetic  opinions  and  a  peram- 
bulator at  the  same  time.  They  were  dreary 
and  technical  advocates  of  liberty. 

At  a  great  festival  at  the  Wartburg,  in  1817, 
the  students  got  out  of  hand,  burned  the  works 
of  those  conservatives,  Haller  and  Kotzebue,  and 
the  Code  Napoleon.  This  youthful  folly  was 
purposely  exaggerated  throughout  Germany, 
and  was  used  by  the  party  of  autocracy  to 
frighten  the  people,  and  also  as  a  reason  for  pass- 
ing even  severer  laws  against  the  ebullitions  of 


70    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

liberty.  At  a  conference  at  Carlsbad  in  1819 
the  representatives  of  the  states  there  assembled 
passed  severe  laws  against  the  student  societies, 
the  press,  the  universities,  and  the  liberal  pro- 
fessors. 

From  1815-1830  the  opinions  of  the  more  en- 
lightened changed.  The  fear  of  Napoleon  was 
gradually  forgotten,  and  the  hatred  of  the  abso- 
lutism of  Prussia  and  Austria  grew. 

In  1830  constitutions  were  demanded  and 
were  guardedly  granted  in  Brunswick,  Saxony, 
Hanover,  and  Hesse-Cassel.  In  1832  things  had 
gone  so  far  that  at  a  great  student  festival  the 
black,  red,  and  gold  flag  of  the  Burschenschaft 
was  hoisted,  toasts  were  drunk  to  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  people,  to  the  United  States  of 
Germany,  and  to  Europe  Republican !  This  was 
followed  by  further  prosecutions.  Prussia  con- 
demned thirty-nine  students  to  death,  but  con- 
fined them  in  a  fortress.  The  prison-cell  of  the 
famous  Fritz  Reuter  may  be  seen  in  Berlin  to- 
day. In  Hesse,  the  chief  of  the  liberal  party, 
Jordan,  was  condemned  to  six  years  in  prison; 
in  Bavaria  a  journalist  was  imprisoned  for  four 
years,  and  other  like  punishments  followed  else- 
where. It  was  in  1837,  when  Queen  Victoria 
came  to  the  throne,  that  Hanover  was  cut  off 
from  the  succession,  as  Hanover  could  not  de- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         71 

scend  to  a  woman.  The  Duke  of  Cumberland 
became  the  ruler  of  Hanover,  and  England 
ceased  to  hold  any  territory  in  Europe. 

From  1839-1847  there  was  comparative  quiet 
in  the  political  world.  The  rulers  of  the  various 
states  succeeded  in  keeping  the  liberal  profes- 
sorial rhetoric  too  damp  to  be  valuable  as  an 
explosive. 

Interwoven  with  this  party  in  Germany,  de- 
manding for  the  people  something  more  of  rep- 
resentation in  the  government,  was  a  movement 
for  the  binding  together  of  the  various  states  in 
a  closer  union.  In  1842  when  the  first  stone  was 
laid  for  the  completion  of  the  Cologne  Cathe- 
dral, at  a  banquet  of  the  German  princes  pre- 
sided over  by  the  King  of  Prussia,  the  King  of 
Wiirtemberg  proposed  a  toast  to  "Our  common 
country!"  That  toast  probably  marks  the  first 
tangible  proof  of  the  existence  of  any  important 
feeling  upon  the  subject  of  German  unity. 

At  a  congress  of  Germanists  at  Frankfort,  in 
1846,  professors  and  students,  jurists  and  his- 
torians, talked  and  discussed  the  questions  of  a 
German  parliament  and  of  national  unity  more 
perhaps  than  matters  of  scholarship. 

In  1847  Professor  Gervinus  founded  at  Heidel- 
berg the  Deutsche  Zeitung,  which  was  to  be  lib- 
eral, national,  and  for  all  Germany. 


72    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

I  should  be  sorry  to  give  the  impression  that  I 
have  not  given  proper  value  to  the  work  of  the 
German  professor  and  student  in  bringing  about 
a  more  liberal  constitution  for  the  states  of  Ger- 
many. Liebig  of  Munich,  Ranke  of  Berlin, 
Sybel  of  Bonn,  Ewald  of  Gottingen,  Mommsen 
in  Berlin,  Dollinger  in  Munich,  and  such  men  as 
Schiemann  in  Berlin  to-day,  were  and  are,  not 
only  scholars,  but  they  have  been  and  are  politi- 
cal teachers;  some  of  them  violently  reaction- 
ary, if  you  please,  but  all  of  them  stirring  men 
to  think. 

No  such  feeling  existed  then,  or  exists  now, 
in  Germany,  as  animated  Oxford  some  fifty 
years  ago  when  the  greatest  Sanscrit  scholar 
then  living  was  rejected  by  a  vote  of  that  body, 
one  voter  declaring:  "I  have  always  voted 
against  damned  intellect,  and  I  trust  I  always 
may!"  A  state  of  mind  that  has  not  altogether 
disappeared  in  England  even  now.  Indeed  I 
am  not  sure,  that  the  most  notable  feature  of 
political  life  in  England  to-day,  is  not  a  growing 
revolt  against  legislation  by  tired  lawyers,  and 
an  increasing  demand  for  common-sense  govern- 
ing again,  even  if  the  governing  be  done  by 
those  with  small  respect  for  "damned  intellect." 

The  third  French  revolution  of  1848  set  fire 
to  all  this,  not  only  in  Germany  but  in  Austria, 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         73 

Hungary,  Roumania,  and  elsewhere.  We  must 
go  rapidly  through  this  period  of  seething  and  of 
political  teething.  The  parliament  at  Frankfort 
with  nothing  but  moral  authority  discussed  and 
declaimed,  and  finally  elected  Archduke  John 
of  Austria  as  "administrator"  of  the  empire. 
There  followed  discussions  as  to  whether  Aus- 
tria should  even  become  a  member  of  the  new 
confederation.  Two  parties,  the  "Little  Ger- 
manists"  and  the  "Pan  Germanists,"  those  in 
favor  of  including,  and  those  opposed  to  the  in- 
clusion of  Austria,  fought  one  another,  with 
Prussia  leading  the  one  and  Austria,  with  the 
prestige  of  having  been  head  of  the  former  Holy 
Roman  Empire,  the  other. 

In  1849  Austria  withdrew  altogether  and  the 
King  of  Prussia  was  elected  Emperor  of  Ger- 
many, but  refused  the  honor  on  the  ground  that 
he  could  not  accept  the  title  from  the  people,  but 
only  from  his  equals.  There  followed  riots  and 
uprisings  of  the  people  in  Prussia,  Saxony,  Baden, 
and  elsewhere  throughout  Germany.  The  Prus- 
sian guards  were  sent  to  Dresden  to  quell  the 
rioting  there  and  took  the  city  after  two  days' 
fighting.  The  parliament  itself  was  dispersed 
and  moved  to  Stuttgart,  but  there  again  they 
were  dispersed,  and  the  end  was  a  flight  of  the 
liberals  to  Switzerland,  France,  and  the  United 


74    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

States.  We  in  America  profited  by  the  coming 
of  such  valuable  citizens  as  Carl  Schurz  and 
many  others.  There  were  driven  from  Ger- 
many, they  and  their  descendants,  many  among 
our  most  valuable  citizens.  The  descendant  of 
one  of  the  worthiest  of  them,  Admiral  Osterhaus, 
is  one  of  the  most  respected  officers  in  our  navy, 
and  will  one  day  command  it,  and  we  could  not 
be  in  safer  hands.  In  1849  the  German  Federal 
fleet  was  sold  at  auction  as  useless;  Austria  was 
again  in  the  ascendant  and  German  subjects  in 
Schleswig  were  handed  over  to  the  Danes. 

In  1850  both  the  King  of  Prussia  and  the  Em- 
peror of  Austria  called  congresses,  but  Prussia 
finally  gave  up  hers,  and  the  ancient  confedera- 
tion as  of  before  1848  met  as  a  diet  at  Frankfort 
and  from  1851-1858  Bismarck  was  the  Prussian 
delegate  and  Austria  presided  over  the  delib- 
erations. 

A  factor  that  made  for  unity  among  the 
German  states  was  the  Zollverein.  From  1818- 
1853  under  the  leadership  of  Prussia  the  various 
states  were  persuaded  to  join  in  equalizing  their 
tariffs.  Between  1834-5  Prijssia,  Bavaria,  Wiir- 
temberg,  Saxony,  Baden,  Hesse-Nassau,  Thur- 
ingia,  and  Frankfort  agreed  upon  a  common 
standard  for  customs  duties,  and  a  few  years 
later  they  were  joined  by  Brunswick,  Hanover, 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         75 

and  the  Mecklenburgs.  German  industry  and 
commerce  had  their  beginnings  in  these  agree- 
ments. The  hundreds  of  different  customs  duties 
became  so  exasperating  that  even  jealous  little 
governments  agreed  to  conform  to  simpler  laws, 
and  probably  this  commercial  necessity  did  more 
to  bring  about  the  unity  of  Germany  than  the 
King,  or  politics,  or  the  army. 

With  the  struggles  of  the  various  states  to  ob- 
tain constitutions  we  cannot  deal,  nor  would  it 
add  to  the  understanding  of  the  present  polit- 
ical condition  of  the  German  Empire. 

Prussia,  after  riots  in  Berlin,  after  promises  and 
delays  from  the  vacillating  King,  who  one  day 
orders  his  own  troops  out  of  the  capital  and  his 
brother,  later  William  I,  to  England  to  appease 
the  anger  of  the  mob,  and  parades  the  streets 
with  the  colors  of  the  citizens  in  revolt  wrapped 
about  him;  and  the  next  day,  surly,  obstinate, 
but  ever  orating,  holds  back  from  his  pledges, 
finally  accepts  a  constitution  which  is  probably 
as  little  democratic  as  any  in  the  world. 

Of  the  sixty-five  million  inhabitants  of  the 
German  Empire,  Prussia  has  over  forty  millions. 
The  Landtag  of  Prussia  is  composed  of  two 
chambers,  the  first  called  the  Herrenhaus,  or 
House  of  Lords,  and  the  second  the  Abgeord- 
netenhaus,  or  Chamber  of  Deputies.  This  up- 


7G    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

per  house  is  made  up  of  the  princes  of  the 
royal  family  who  are  of  age;  the  descendants  of 
the  formerly  sovereign  families  of  Hohenzollern- 
Hechingen  and  Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ;  chiefs 
of  the  princely  houses  recognized  by  the  Con- 
gress of  Vienna;  heads  of  the  territorial  nobility 
formed  by  the  King;  representatives  of  the  uni- 
versities; burgomasters  of  towns  with  more 
than  fifty  thousand  inhabitants,  and  an  un- 
limited number  of  persons  nominated  by  the 
King  for  life  or  for  a  limited  period.  This  upper 
chamber  is  a  mere  drawing-room  of  the  sover- 
eign's courtiers,  though  there  may  be,  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  there  are  at  the  present  time,  rep- 
resentatives even  of  labor  in  this  chamber,  but 
in  a  minority  so  complete  that  their  actual  influ- 
ence upon  legislation,  except  in  a  feeble  advisory 
capacity,  amounts  to  nothing.  In  this  Herren- 
haus,  or  upper  chamber,  of  Prussia  there  are  at 
this  writing  among  the  327  members  3  bankers, 
8  representatives  of  the  industrial  and  merchant 
class,  and  1  mechanic;  12  in  all,  or  not  even  four 
per  cent.,  to  represent  the  industrial,  financial, 
commercial,  and  working  classes.  Even  in  the 
lower  chamber,  or  Abgeordnetenhaus,  there  are 
only  10  merchants,  19  manufacturers,  7  labor 
representatives,  and  1  bank  director,  or  37 
members  who  represent  the  commercial,  manu- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         77 

facturing,  and  industrial  interests  in  a  total 
membership  of  443. 

In  the  other  states  of  Germany  much  the 
same  conditions  exist.  In  Bavaria,  in  the  upper 
house,  or  Kammer  der  Reichsrdte,  there  is  no 
representative,  and  in  the  lower  house  of  163 
members  only  29  representatives  of  the  indus- 
trial world. 

In  Saxony,  the  most  socialistic  state  in  Ger- 
many, the  upper  chamber  with  49  members  has 
5  industrials;  the  lower  chamber  with  82  mem- 
bers has  40  representatives  of  commercial,  indus- 
trial, and  financial  affairs. 

In  Wiirtemberg,  in  the  upper  chamber  writh 
51  members  there  are  3  industrials;  and  in  the 
second  chamber  with  63  members  there  are  17 
industrials. 

In  Baden,  of  the  37  members  of  the  upper 
house  there  are  6  industrials;  of  the  73  mem- 
bers of  the  lower  house  there  are  23  representa- 
tives of  commerce  and  industry. 

This  condition  of  political  inequality  is  the 
result  of  the  maintenance  of  the  old  political 
divisions,  despite  the  fact  that  in  the  last  thirty 
years  the  whole  complexion  of  the  country  has 
changed  radically,  due  to  the  rapid  increase  of 
the  city  populations  representing  the  industrial 
and  commercial  progress  of  a  nation  that  is  now 


78     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  rival  of  both  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain.  In  more  than  one  instance  a  town  with 
over  300,000  inhabitants  will  be  represented  in 
the  legislature  in  the  same  proportion  as  a  coun- 
try population  of  30,000.  Stettin,  for  example, 
with  a  population  of  245,000,  which  is  a  seventh 
of  the  total  population  of  Pomerania,  has  only 
6  of  the  89  provincial  representatives.  Further, 
the  three-class  system  of  voting  in  Prussia  and 
in  the  German  cities,  is  a  unique  arrangement 
for  giving  men  the  suffrage  without  either  power 
or  privilege.  According  to  this  system  every 
male  inhabitant  of  Prussia  aged  twenty-five  is 
entitled  to  vote  in  the  election  of  members  of 
the  lower  house.  The  voters,  however,  are  di- 
vided into  three  classes.  This  division  is  made 
by  taking  the  total  amount  of  the  state  taxes 
paid  in  each  electoral  district  and  dividing  it 
into  three  equal  amounts.  The  first  third  is 
paid  by  the  highest  tax-payers ;  the  second  third 
by  the  next  highest  tax-payers,  and  the  last 
third  by  the  rest.  The  first  class  consists  of  a 
comparatively  few  wealthy  people;  it  may  even 
happen  that  a  single  individual  pays  a  third  of 
the  taxes  in  a  given  district.  These  three  classes 
then  elect  the  members  of  an  electoral  college, 
who  then  elect  the  member  of  the  house.  In 
Prussia  it  may  be  said  roughly  that  260,000 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         79 

wealthy  tax-payers  elect  one-third;  870,000  tax- 
payers elect  one-third,  and  the  other  6,500,000 
voters  elect  one-third  of  the  members  of  the 
electoral  college,  with  the  consequence  that  the 
6,500,000  are  not  represented  at  all  in  the  lower 
house  of  Prussia.  In  order  to  make  this  three- 
class  system  of  voting  quite  clear,  let  us  take  the 
case  of  a  city  where  the  same  principle  may  be 
seen  at  work  on  a  smaller  scale.  In  1910,  in 
the  city  of  Berlin,  there  were: 

931  voters  of  the  first  class  paying  27,914,593 

marks  of  the  total  tax. 
32,131  voters  of  the  second  class  paying  27,908,- 

776  marks  of  the  total  tax. 
357,345  voters  of  the  third  class  paying  16,165,- 

501  marks  of  the  total  tax. 

Roughly  the  voters  in  the  first  class  each  paid 
$7,500;  those  in  the  second  class  $218;  those 
in  the  third  class  $11.  The  931  voters  elected 
one-third,  32,131  voters  elected  one-third,  and 
357,345  elected  one-third  of  the  town  council- 
lors. In  this  same  year  in  Berlin  there  were: 

521  persons  with  incomes  between  $25,000  and 

$62,500. 
139  persons  with  incomes  between  $62,500  and 

$125,000. 


80    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

22  persons  with  incomes  between  $125,000  and 
$187,500. 

19  persons  with  incomes  between  $187,000  and 
$250,000. 

19  persons  with  incomes  of  $250,000  or  more. 
Or  720  persons  in  Berlin  in  1912  with  in- 
comes of  over  $25,000  a  year,  and  they  are 
practically  the  governors  of  the  city. 

As  a  result  of  these  divisions  according  to  taxes 
paid,  of  the  144  town  councillors  elected,  only  38 
were  Social-Democrats,  though  Berlin  is  over- 
whelmingly Social-Democratic,  and  consequently 
the  affairs  of  this  city  of  more  than  2,000,000 
inhabitants  are  in  the  hands  of  33,062  persons 
who  elect  two-thirds  of  the  town  councillors. 

In  the  city  of  Diisseldorf  there  were,  exclud- 
ing the  suburbs,  62,443  voters  at  the  election  for 
town  councillors  in  1910.  The  first  class  was 
composed  of  797  voters  paying  from  1,940  to 
264,252  marks  of  taxes;  6,645  voters  paying 
from  222  to  1,939  marks;  and  55,001  voters  pay- 
ing 221  marks  or  less.  These  7,442  voters  of  the 
first  and  second  classes  were  in  complete  control 
of  the  city  government  by  a  clear  majority  of 
two-thirds. 

It  is  this  three-class  system  of  voting  that 
makes  Prussia,  and  the  Prussian  cities  as  well, 
impregnable  against  any  assault  from  the  demo- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         81 

cratically  inclined.  In  addition  to  this  system, 
the  old  electoral  divisions  of  forty  years  ago 
remain  unchanged,  and  consequently  the  agri- 
cultural east  of  Prussia,  including  east  and  west 
Prussia,  Brandenburg,  Pomerania,  Posen,  and 
Silesia,  with  their  large  landholders,  return  more 
members  to  the  Prussian  lower  house  than  the 
much  greater  population  of  western  industrial 
Prussia,  which  includes  Sachsen,  Hanover,  West- 
phalia, Schleswig-Holstein,  Hohenzollern,  Hes- 
sen-Nassau,  and  the  Rhine.  Further,  the  execu- 
tive government  of  Prussia  is  conducted  by  a 
ministry  of  state,  the  members  of  which  are 
appointed  by  the  King,  and  hold  office  at  his 
pleasure,  without  control  from  the  Landtag. 

How  little  the  people  succeeded  in  extorting 
from  King  Frederick  William  IV  in  the  way 
of  a  constitution  may  be  gathered  from  this 
glimpse  of  the  present  political  conditions  of 
Prussia. 

The  local  government  of  Prussia  is  practically 
as  centralized  in  a  few  hands  as  the  executive 
government  of  the  state  itself.  The  largest  areas 
are  the  provinces,  whose  chiefs  or  presidents  also 
are  appointed  by  the  sovereign,  and  who  repre- 
sent the  central  government.  There  are  twelve 
such  provinces  in  Prussia,  ranging  in  size  from 
the  Rhineland  and  Brandenburg,  with  7,120,519 


82    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  4,093,007  inhabitants  respectively,  to  Schles- 
wig-Holstein,  with  1,619,673. 

Each  province  is  divided  into  two  or  more 
government  districts,  of  which  there  are  thirty- 
five  in  all.  At  the  head  of  each  of  these  districts 
is  the  district  president,  also  appointed  by  the 
crown. 

In  addition  there  is  the  Kreis,  or  Circle,  of 
which  there  are  some  490,  with  populations  vary- 
ing from  20,000  to  801,000.  These  circles  are, 
for  all  practical  purposes,  governed  by  the  Land- 
rath,  who  is  appointed  for  life  by  the  crown, 
and  who  is  so  fully  recognized  as  the  agent  of  the 
central  government  and  not  as  the  servant  of 
the  locality  in  which  he  rules,  that  on  one  oc- 
casion several  Landrathe  were  summarily  dis- 
missed for  voting  against  the  government  and  in 
conformity  to  the  wishes  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  circle  in  which  they  lived!  Though  the 
Landrath  is  nominated  by  the  circle  assembly  for 
appointment  by  the  crown,  he  can  be  dismissed 
by  his  superiors  of  the  central  hierarchy.  As  his 
promotion,  and  his  career  in  fact,  is  dependent 
upon  these  superiors,  he  naturally  sides  with  the 
central  government  in  all  cases  of  dispute  or 
friction. 

Further,  and  this  is  important,  all  officials  in 
Germany  are  legally  privileged  persons.  All 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         83 

disputes  between  individuals  and  public  author- 
ities in  Germany  are  decided  by  tribunals  quite 
distinct  from  the  ordinary  courts.  These  courts 
are  specially  constituted,  and  they  aim  at  pro- 
tecting the  officials  from  any  personal  responsi- 
bility for  acts  done  by  them  in  their  official 
capacity. 

In  America,  and  I  presume  in  Great  Britain 
also,  any  disputes  between  public  authorities  and 
private  individuals  are  settled  in  the  ordinary 
courts  of  justice,  under  the  rules  of  the  ordinary 
law  of  the  land.  This  super-common-law  posi- 
tion of  the  Prussian  official  is  a  fatal  incentive  to 
the  aggravating  exaggeration  of  his  importance, 
and  to  the  indifference  of  his  behavior  to  the 
private  citizen.  There  may  be  officials  who  are 
uninfluenced  by  this  sheltered  position,  indeed  I 
know  personally  many  who  are,  but  there  is 
equally  no  doubt  that  many  succumb  to  arro- 
gance and  lethargy  as  a  consequence. 

How  thoroughly  Prussia  is  covered  by  a  net- 
work of  officialdom,  is  further  discovered  when 
it  is  known,  that  the  entire  area  of  Prussia  is 
some  twenty  thousand  square  miles  less  than 
that  of  the  State  of  California.  The  whole  Prus- 
sian doctrine  of  local  self-government,  too,  is 
entirely  different  from  ours.  Their  idea  is  that 
self-government  is  the  performance  by  locally 


84    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

elected  bodies  of  the  will  of  the  state,  not  neces- 
sarily of  the  locality  which  elects  them.  Local 
authorities,  whether  elected  or  not,  are  supposed 
to  be  primarily  the  agents  of  the  state,  and  only 
secondarily  the  agents  of  the  particular  locality 
they  serve.  In  Prussia,  all  provincial  and  circle 
assemblies  and  communal  councils,  may  be  dis- 
solved by  royal  decree,  hence  even  these  elected 
assemblies  may  only  serve  their  constituencies 
at  the  will  and  pleasure  of  the  central  authority. 
It  would  avail  little  to  go  into  minute  details 
in  describing  the  government  of  Prussia;  this 
slight  sketch  of  the  electoral  system,  and  of  the 
centralization  of  the  government,  suffices  to  show 
two  things  that  it  is  particularly  my  purpose  to 
make  clear.  One  is  the  preponderating  influ- 
ence of  Prussia  in  the  empire,  due  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  power  in  a  single  person ;  and  the  other 
is  to  show  how  ridiculously  futile  it  is  to  refer 
to  Prussia  as  an  example  of  the  success  of  social 
legislation.  The  state  ownership  of  railroads, 
old-age  pensions,  accident  and  sickness  insur- 
ance, and  the  like  are  one  thing  in  Prussia  which 
is  a  close  corporation,  and  quite  another  in  any 
community  or  country  under  democratic  govern- 
ment. What  takes  place  in  Prussia  would  cer- 
tainly not  take  place  in  America  or  in  England. 
To  draw  inferences  from  a  state  governed  as  is 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         85 

Prussia,  for  application  to  such  democratic  com- 
munities as  America  or  England,  is  as  valuable 
as  to  argue  from  the  habits  of  birds,  that  such 
and  such  a  treatment  would  succeed  with  fish. 

It  was  with  this  autocratic  Prussia  at  his  back, 
that  the  greatest  man  Germany  has  produced, 
succeeded  in  bringing  about  German  unity  and 
the  foundation  of  the  German  Empire.  As  the 
representative  of  Prussia  in  the  Diet,  as  her 
ambassador  to  Russia,  and  to  France,  he  gained 
the  insight  into  the  European  situation  which 
led  him  to  hold  as  his  political  creed,  that  only 
by  blood  and  iron,  and  not  by  declamations  and 
resolutions,  could  Germany  be  united. 

"During  the  time  I  was  in  office,"  he  writes, 
"I  advised  three  wars, the  Danish, the  Bohemian, 
and  the  French ;  but  every  time  I  have  first  made 
clear  to  myself  whether  the  war,  if  successful, 
would  bring  a  prize  of  victory  worth  the  sacri- 
fices which  every  war  requires,  and  which  now 
are  so  much  greater  than  in  the  last  century. 
...  I  have  never  looked  at  international  quar- 
rels which  can  only  be  settled  by  a  national  war 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Gottingen  student 
code;  .  .  .  but  I  have  always  considered  simply 
their  reaction  on  the  claim  of  the  German  peo- 
ple, in  equality  with  the  other  great  states  and 
powers  of  Europe,  to  lead  an  autonomous  polit- 


86    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ical  life,  so  far  as  is  possible  on  the  basis  of  our 
peculiar  national  capacity."  In  1863  he  writes 
to  von  der  Goltz,  then  German  ambassador  in 
Paris:  "The  question  is  whether  we  are  a  great 
power  or  a  state  in  the  German  federation, 
and  whether  we  are  conformably  to  the  former 
quality  to  be  governed  by  a  monarch,  or,  as  in 
the  latter  case  would  be  at  any  rate  admissible, 
by  professors,  district  judges,  and  the  gossips  of 
the  small  towns.  The  pursuit  of  the  phantom 
of  popularity  in  Germany  which  we  have  been 
carrying  on  for  the  last  forty  years  has  cost  us 
our  position  in  Germany  and  in  Europe;  and  we 
shall  not  win  this  back  again  by  allowing  our- 
selves to  be  carried  away  by  the  stream  in  the 
persuasion  that  we  are  directing  its  course,  but 
only  by  standing  firmly  on  our  legs  and  being, 
first  of  allf  a  great  power  and  a  German  federal 
state  afterward" 

After  Napoleon  and  the  interminable  elocu- 
tionary squabbles  of  the  German  states,  first, 
for  constitutional  rights,  and,  second,  for  some 
basis  of  unity  among  themselves,  which  were 
the  two  main  streams  of  political  activity,  there 
were  three  main  steps  in  the  formation  of  the 
now  existing  empire:  first,  in  1866,  the  North 
German  Confederation  under  the  presidency  of 
Prussia  and  excluding  Austria;  second,  the  con- 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         87 

elusion  of  treaties,  1866-1867,  between  the  North 
German  Confederation  and  the  south  German 
states;  third,  the  formal  union  of  the  north  and 
south  German  states  as  an  empire  in  1871. 

Although  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  ceased  to 
exist  legally  in  1806,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
as  a  fiction  weighing  still  upon  the  imagination 
of  German  politicians,  it  did  not  wholly  disap- 
pear until  the  war  between  Prussia  and  Austria, 
for  then  Prussia  fought  not  only  Austria  but 
Bavaria,  Wiirtemberg,  Saxony,  Hanover,  Nas- 
sau, Baden,  and  the  two  Hesse  states,  and  at 
Sadowa  in  Bohemia  the  war  was  settled  by  the 
defeat  of  the  Austrians  before  they  could  be 
joined  by  these  allies,  who  were  disposed  of  in 
detail.  Frankfort  was  so  harshly  treated  that 
the  mayor  hanged  himself,  and  the  Prussianizing 
of  Hanover  has  never  been  entirely  forgiven, 
and  the  claimants  to  the  throne  in  exile  are  still 
the  centre  of  a  political  party  antagonistic  to 
Prussia.  The  taking  over  of  north  Schleswig, 
of  Hanover,  Hesse-Cassel,  and  Nassau  by  Prus- 
sia after  the  Austrian  war  was  according  to  the 
rough  arbitrament  of  conquest.  "Our  right," 
replied  Bismarck  to  the  just  criticism  of  this 
spoliation,  "is  the  right  of  the  German  nation 
to  exist,  to  breathe,  to  be  united;  it  is  the 
right  and  the  duty  of  Prussia  to  give  the  Ger- 


88    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

man  nation  the  foundation  necessary  for  its 
existence."  In  taking  Alsace-Lorraine  from 
France,  Bismarck  insisted  that  this  was  a  neces- 
sary barrier  against  France  and  that  Germany's 
possession  of  Metz  and  Strassburg  were  necessi- 
ties of  the  situation  also. 

The  history  of  German  unity  is  the  biography 
of  Bismarck.  Otto  Eduard  Leopold  von  Bis- 
marck was  born  in  Schonhausen,  in  that  Mark  of 
Brandenburg  which  was  the  cradle  of  the  Prus- 
sian monarchy,  on  the  first  of  April,  1815.  His 
grandfather  fought  at  Rossbach  under  the  great 
Frederick.  He  was  confirmed  in  Berlin  in  1831 
by  the  famous  pastor  and  theologian,  Schleier- 
macher,  and  maintained  all  his  life  that  without 
his  belief  in  God  he  would  have  found  no  reason 
for  his  patriotism  or  for  any  serious  work  in  life. 

He  matriculated  as  a  student  of  law  and 
science  at  Gottingen  in  May,  1832,  and  later 
at  Berlin  in  1834.  He  was  a  tall,  large-limbed, 
blue-eyed  young  giant,  the  boldest  rider,  the 
best  swordsman,  and  the  heartiest  drinker  of  his 
day.  He  is  still  looked  upon  in  Germany  as  the 
typical  hero  of  corps  student  life,  and  his  pipe, 
or  his  Schlager,  or  his  cap,  or  his  Kneipe  jacket 
is  preserved  as  the  relic  of  a  saint.  His  was  not 
the  tepid  virtue  born  of  lack  of  vitality.  One 
has  but  to  remember  Augustine  and  Origen  and 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         89 

Ignatius  Loyola,  to  recall  the  fact  that  the 
preachers  of  salvation,  the  best  of  them,  have 
generally  had  themselves  to  tame  before  they 
mastered  the  world. 

This  youth  Bismarck  must  have  had  some 
vigorous  battles  with  Bismarck  before  he  mar- 
ried Johanna  Friederika  Charlotte  Dorothea 
Eleanore  von  Puttkamer,  July  28,  1847,  much 
against  the  wishes  of  her  parents,  and  settled 
down  to  his  life-work.  As  was  said  of  John  Pym, 
"he  thought  it  part  of  a  man's  religion  to  see  that 
his  country  was  well  governed,"  and  his  country 
became  his  passion.  Like  most  men  of  intense 
feeling,  he  loved  few  people  and  loyally  hated 
many.  More  men  feared  and  envied  him  than 
liked  him.  His  wife,  his  sister,  his  king,  a 
student  friend,  Keyserling,  and  the  American, 
Motley,  shared  with  his  country  his  affection. 
Germany  might  well  take  it  to  heart  that  it  was 
Motley  the  American  who  was  of  all  men  dearest 
to  her  giant  creator.  The  same  type  of  American 
would  serve  her  better  to-day  than  any  other, 
did  she  only  know  it!  In  1849  he  was  elected 
to  the  Prussian  Chamber.  In  1852  a  whiff  of 
the  old  dare-devil  got  loose,  and  he  fought  a  duel 
with  Freiherr  von  Vincke. 

In  1852  he  is  sent  on  his  first  responsible  mis- 
sion to  Vienna,  and  found  there  the  traditions 


90    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  the  Metternich  diplomacy  still  ruling.  What 
Napoleon  had  said  of  Metternich  he  no  doubt 
remembered:  "II  ment  trop.  II  faut  mentir 
quelquefois,  mais  mentir  tout  le  temps  c'est 
trop!"  for  he  adopted  quite  the  opposite  policy 
in  his  own  diplomatic  dealings. 

In  1855  he  became  a  member  of  the  upper 
house  of  Prussia,  and  in  1859  is  sent  as  minister 
to  St.  Petersburg.  In  May,  1862,  he  is  sent  as 
minister  to  Paris,  and  learns  to  know,  and  not 
greatly  to  admire,  the  third  Napoleon  and  his 
court. 

On  the  23d  of  September,  1862,  he  is  appointed 
Staats-minister,  and  a  week  later  thunders  out 
his  famous  blood-and-iron  speech.  On  October 
the  8th,  1862,  he  is  definitely  named  Minister 
President  and  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

William  I  had  succeeded  his  brother  as  king. 
He  was  a  soldier  and  a  believer  in  the  army,  and 
wished  to  spend  more  on  it,  and  to  lengthen  the 
time  of  service  with  the  colors  to  three  years. 
The  legislature  opposed  these  measures.  A  min- 
ister was  needed  who  could  bully  the  legisla- 
ture, and  Bismarck  was  chosen  for  the  task.  He 
spent  the  necessary  money  despite  the  legisla- 
tive opposition,  pleading  that  a  legislature  that 
refused  to  vote  necessary  supplies  had  ipso  facto 
laid  down  its  proper  functions,  and  the  king 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         91 

must  take  over  the  responsibilities  of  govern- 
ment that  they  declined  to  exercise.  The  cav- 
alry boots  were  beginning  to  trample  their  way 
to  Paris,  and  to  the  crowning  of  an  emperor. 

In  February,  1864,  Prussia  and  Austria  to- 
gether declare  war  upon  Denmark  over  the 
Schleswig-Holstein  succession.  They  agree  to 
govern  the  spoils  between  them,  but  fall  out  over 
the  question  of  their  respective  jurisdiction,  and 
the  Prussian  army  being  ready,  and  the  Moltke 
plan  of  campaign  worked  out,  war  is  declared, 
and  in  seven  weeks  the  Treaty  of  Prague  is 
signed,  in  1866,  by  which  Austria  gives  up  all  her 
rights  in  Schleswig-Holstein,  and  abandons  her 
claim  to  take  part  in  the  reorganization  of  Ger- 
many. The  North  German  Confederation  is 
formed  to  include  all  lands  north  of  the  Main; 
Schleswig-Holstein,  Hanover,  the  Hesse  states, 
Nassau,  and  Frankfurt-am-Main  become  part  of 
Prussia;  and  the  south  German  states  agree  to 
remain  neutral,  but  allies  of  Prussia  in  war. 

On  the  llth  of  March,  1867,  a  month  after  the 
formation  of  the  Confederation  of  the  North 
German  States,  Bismarck  proclaims  with  pride 
in  the  new  Reichstag:  "Setzen  wir  Deutschland, 
so  zu  sagen,  in  den  Sattel !  Reiten  wird  es  schon 
konnen!" 

October  13th,  1868,  Leopold  von  Sigmaringen, 


92    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

a  German  prince  of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern, 
is  named  for  the  first  time  as  a  candidate  for 
the  Spanish  throne.  Nobody  in  Germany,  or 
anywhere  else,  was  much  more  interested  in  this 
candidature,  than  we  are  now  interested  in  the 
woman's  suffrage  or  the  prohibition  candidate 
at  home.  But  France  had  looked  on  with  jeal- 
ous eyes  at  the  vigorous  growth  and  martial  suc- 
cesses of  Prussia.  It  was  thought  well  to  attack 
her  and  humiliate  her  before  she  became  stronger. 
All  France  was  convinced,  too,  that  the  southern 
German  states  would  revert  to  their  old  love  in 
case  of  actual  war,  and  side  with  the  nephew  of 
their  former  friend,  the  great  Napoleon.  The 
French  ambassador  is  instructed  to  force  the 
pace.  Not  only  must  the  Prussian  King  disavow 
all  intention  to  support  the  candidacy  of  the  Ger- 
man prince,  but  he  must  be  asked  to  humiliate 
himself  by  binding  himself  never  in  the  future 
to  push  such  claims. 

William  I  is  at  Ems,  and  Benedetti,  the  French 
ambassador,  reluctantly  presses  the  insulting 
demand  of  his  country  upon  the  royal  gentle- 
man as  he  is  walking.  The  King  declines  to  see 
Benedetti  again,  and  telegraphs  to  Bismarck  the 
gist  of  the  interview.  Lord  Acton  writes:  "He 
[Bismarck]  drew  his  long  pencil  and  altered  the 
text,  showing  only  that  Benedetti  had  presented 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         93 

an  offensive  demand,  and  that  the  King  had  re- 
fused to  see  him.  That  there  might  be  no  mis- 
take he  made  this  official  by  sending  it  to  all  the 
embassies  and  legations.  Moltke  exclaimed, 
'  You  have  converted  surrender  into  defiance. 
The  altered  telegram  was  also  sent  to  the  Nord- 
deutsche  Allgemeine  Zeitung  and  to  officials.  It 
is  not  perhaps  generally  known  that  General 
Lebrun  went  to  Vienna  in  June,  1870,  to  discuss 
an  alliance  with  Austria  for  an  attack  on  the 
North  German  Confederation  in  the  following 
spring.  Bismarck  knew  this.  This  was  on  the 
13th  of  July,  1870;  on  the  16th  the  order  was 
given  to  mobilize  the  army,  on  the  31st  followed 
the  proclamation  of  the  King  to  his  people: 
"Zur  Errettung  des  Vaterlandes."  On  Au- 
gust the  2d,  King  William  took  command  of  the 
German  armies,  and  on  September  1st,  Napo- 
leon handed  over  his  sword,  and  on  January 
the  18th,  1871,  King  William  of  Prussia  was 
proclaimed  German  Emperor  in  the  Hall  of  the 
Mirrors  in  the  Palace  at  Versailles. 

"It  sounds  so  lovely  what  our  fathers  did, 
And  what  we  do  is,  as  it  was  to  them, 
Toilsome  and  incomplete." 

It  is  easy  to  forget  in  such  a  rapid  survey  of 
events  that  Bismarck  could  have  had  any  seri- 


94    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ous  opposition  to  face  as  he  tramped  through 
those  eight  years,  from  1862  to  1870,  with  a  king- 
dom on  his  back.  It  is  easy  to  forget  that  King 
William  himself  wished  to  abdicate  in  those  dark 
hours,  when  his  people  refused  him  their  confi- 
dence, and  called  a  halt  upon  his  endeavors  to 
strengthen  the  absolutely  essential  instrument 
for  Prussia's  development,  the  army;  it  is  easy 
to  forget  that  even  the  silent  and  seemingly  im- 
perturbable Moltke  hesitated  and  wavered  a 
little  at  the  audacity  of  his  comrade;  it  is  easy 
to  forget  the  conspiracy  of  opposition  of  the 
three  women  of  the  court,  the  Crown  Princess, 
Frau  von  Blumenthal,  and  Frau  von  Gottberg, 
all  of  English  birth,  and  all  using  needles  against 
this  man  accustomed  to  the  Schlager  and  the 
sWord;  it  is  easy  to  forget  that  even  Queen  Vic- 
toria's influence  was  used  against  him  to  pre- 
vent the  reaping  of  the  justifiable  fruits  of  vic- 
tory in  1871;  it  is  easy  to  forget  what  a  bold 
throw  it  was  to  go  to  war  with  Austria,  and  to 
array  Prussia  against  the  very  German  states 
she  must  later  bind  to  herself;  it  is  easy  to  for- 
get the  dour  patience  of  this  irascible  giant  with 
the  petulant  and  often  petty  legislature  with 
which  he  had  to  deal. 

I  cannot  understand  how  any  German  can 
criticise  Bismarck,  but  there  are  official  prigs 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         95 

who  do;  little  decorated  bureaucrats  who  live 
their  lives  out  poring  over  papers,  with  an  eye 
out  for  a  "von"  before  their  bourgeois  names, 
and  as  void  of  audacity  as  a  sheep;  men  who 
creep  up  the  stairway  to  promotion  and  recogni- 
tion, clinging  with  cautious  grip  to  the  banis- 
ters. One  sees  them,  their  coats  covered  with 
the  ceramic  insignia  of  their  placid  servitude, 
decorations  tossed  to  them  by  the  careless  hand 
of  a  master  who  is  satisfied  if  they  but  sign  his 
decrees,  with  the  i's  properly  dotted,  and  the  t's 
unexceptionably  crossed.  They  are  the  crumply 
officials  who  melted  into  defencelessness  and 
moral  decrepitude  after  Frederick  the  Great, 
and  again  at  the  glance  of  Napoleon,  and  who 
owe  the  little  stiffness  they  have  to  the  fact  that 
Bismarck  lived.  It  is  one  of  the  things  a 
full-blooded  man  is  least  able  to  bear  in  Ger- 
many, to  hear  the  querulous  questioning  of  the 
great  deeds  of  this  man,  whose  boot-legs  were 
stiff er  than  the  backbones  of  those  who  decry 
him. 

What  a  splendid  fellow  he  was! 

"Give  me  the  spirit  that,  on  this  life's  rough 

sea, 

Loves  to  have  his  sails  filled  with  a  lusty  wind, 
Even  till  his  sail-yards  tremble  and  his  masts  do 

crack, 


96    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

And  his  rapt  ship  run  on  her  side  so  low 
That  she  drinks  water  and  her  keel  ploughs  air. 
There  is  no  danger  to  a  man  that  knows 
What  life  and  death  is  —  there's  not  any  law 
Exceeds  his  knowledge;  neither  is  it  lawful 
That  he  should  stoop  to  any  other  law." 

He  was  no  worshipper  of  that  flimsy  culture 
which  is,  and  has  been  for  a  hundred  years,  an 
obsession  of  the  German.  He  knew,  none  knew 
better  indeed,  that  the  choicest  knowledge  is 
only  mitigated  ignorance.  He  surprised  Dis- 
raeli with  his  mastery  of  English,  and  Napoleon 
with  his  fluency  in  French,  both  of  which  he  had 
learned  from  his  Huguenot  professors.  The  pop- 
ular man,  the  popular  book,  the  popular  music, 
picture,  or  play,  were  none  of  them  a  golden 
calf  to  him.  He  mastered  what  he  needed  for 
his  work,  and  pretended  to  no  enthusiasm  for 
intellectualism  as  such.  He  knew  that  there 
is  no  real  culture  without  character,  and  that 
the  mere  aptitude  for  knowing  and  doing  with- 
out character  is  merely  the  simian  cleverness 
that  often  dazzles  but  never  does  anything  of 
importance.  "Culture!"  writes  Henry  Morley, 
"the  aim  of  culture  is  to  bring  forth  in  their  due 
season  the  fruits  of  the  earth."  Any  learning, 
any  accomplishments,  that  do  not  serve  a  man 
to  bring  forth  the  fruits  of  the  earth  in  their  due 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         97 

season  are  merely  mental  gimcracks,  flimsy  toys, 
to  admire  perhaps,  to  play  with,  and  to  be  thrown 
aside  as  useless  when  duty  makes  its  sovereign 
demands. 

Much  as  Germany  has  done  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  intellectual  life  of  the  world,  she 
has  suffered  not  a  little  from  the  superficial  be- 
lief still  widely  held  that  instruction,  that  learn- 
ing, are  culture.  Their  Great  Elector,  their 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  their  Bismarck,  should 
have  taught  them  the  contrary  by  now. 

The  newly  crowned  German  Emperor  left 
Versailles  on  March  7th  for  Berlin,  and  on  March 
21st  the  first  Diet  of  the  new  empire  was 
opened,  and  began  the  task  of  adapting  the  con- 
stitution to  the  altered  circumstances  of  the  new 
empire. 

The  German  Empire  now  consists  of  four 
kingdoms:  Prussia,  Bavaria,  Saxony,  and  Wiir- 
temberg;  .of  six  grand  duchies:  Baden,  Hesse- 
Darmstadt,  Saxe-Weimar,  Oldenburg,  Meck- 
lenburg-Strelitz,  and  Mecklenburg-Schwerin ;  of 
five  duchies:  Saxe-Meinigen,  Saxe-Altenburg 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  Brunswick,  and  Anhalt;  of 
seven  principalities:  Schwartzburg-Sondershau- 
sen,  Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt,  Waldeck,  Reuss 
(older  line),  Reuss  (younger  line),  Lippe,  and 
Schaumburg-Lippe ;  of  three  free  towns:  Ham- 


98     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

burg,  Bremen,  and  Liibeck;  and  of  one  imperial 
province:  Alsace  Lorraine. 

The  new  empire  is  in  a  sense  a  continuation  of 
the  North  German  Confederation.  There  are 
25  states,  the  largest,  Prussia,  with  a  population 
of  over  40,000,000;  the  smallest,  Schaumburg- 
Lippe,  with  a  population  of  a  little  more  than 
46,000  and  an  area  of  131  square  miles. 

The  central  or  federal  authority  controls  the 
army,  navy,  foreign  relations,  railways,  main 
roads,  canals,  post  and  telegraph,  coinage, 
weights  and  measures,  copyrights,  patents,  and 
legislation  over  nearly  the  whole  field  of  civil 
and  criminal  law,  regulation  of  press  and  associ- 
ations, imperial  finance  and  customs  tariffs, 
which  are  now  the  same  throughout  Germany. 

Bavaria  still  manages  her  own  railways,  and 
Saxony  and  Wiirtemberg  have  certain  privileges 
and  exemptions.  Administration  is  still  almost 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  separate  states. 

The  law  is  imperial,  but  the  judges  are  ap- 
pointed by  the  states,  and  are  under  its  authority. 
The  supreme  court  of  appeal  (Reichsgericht) 
sits  at  Leipsic. 

The  head  of  the  executive  government  is  the 
Emperor,  no  longer  elective  but  hereditary,  and 
attached  to  the  office  of  the  King  of  Prussia. 
Outside  of  Prussia  he  has  little  power  in  civil 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK         99 

matters  and  no  veto  on  legislation.  He  is  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  of  the  navy; 
foreign  affairs  are  in  his  hands,  and  in  the 
federal  council,  or  Bundesrath,  he  exercises  a 
mighty  influence  due  to  Prussia's  preponderating 
influence  and  voting  power.  There  is  no  cabinet, 
just  as  there  is  no  cabinet  in  Great  Britain,  that 
modern  institution  being  merely  a  legislative 
fiction  down  to  this  day.  The  chancellor  of 
the  empire,  who  is  also  prime  minister  of  Prus- 
sia, with  several  secretaries  of  state,  is  chief 
minister  for  all  imperial  affairs.  The  chancellor 
presides  in  the  Bundesrath,  and  has  the  right  to 
speak  in  the  Reichstag,  and  frequently  does 
speak  there.  Indeed,  all  his  more  important  pro- 
nouncements are  made  there.  The  chancellor 
is  responsible  to  the  Emperor  alone,  by  whom  he 
is  nominated,  and  not  to  the  representatives  of 
the  people. 

The  federal  council,  or  Bundesrath,  or  upper 
chamber  of  the  empire,  consists  of  delegates  ap- 
pointed by  and  representing  the  rulers  of  the 
various  states.  There  are  58  members.  Prussia 
has  17,  Bavaria  6,  Saxony  4,  Wurtemberg  4, 
Baden  3,  Hessen  3,  Mecklenburg-Schwerin  2, 
Brunswick  2,  and  each  of  the  other  states  1. 

This  body  meets  in  Berlin,  sits  in  secret,  and 
the  delegates  have  no  discretion,  but  vote  as 


100     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

directed  by  their  state  governments.  Here  it  is 
that  Prussia,  and  through  Prussia  the  Emperor, 
dominates.  This  Bundesrath  is  the  most  power- 
ful upper  chamber  in  the  world.  With  respect 
to  all  laws  concerning  the  army  and  navy,  and 
taxation  for  imperial  purposes,  the  vote  of  Prus- 
sia shall  decide  disputes,  if  such  vote  be  cast  in 
favor  of  maintaining  existing  arrangements.  In 
other  words,  Prussia  is  armed  in  the  Bundesrath 
with  a  conservative  veto!  In  declaring  war  and 
making  treaties,  the  consent  of  the  Bundesrath 
is  required.  The  following  articles  also  give 
the  Bundesrath  a  very  complete  control  of  the 
Reichstag.  Article  7  reads:  "The  Bundesrath 
shall  take  action  upon  (1)  the  measures  to  be 
proposed  to  the  Reichstag  and  the  resolutions 
passed  by  the  same;  (2)  the  general  administra- 
tive provisions  and  arrangements  necessary  for 
the  execution  of  the  imperial  laws,  so  far  as  no 
other  provision  is  made  by  law;  (3)  the  defects 
which  may  be  discovered  in  the  execution  of  the 
imperial  laws  or  of  the  provisions  and  arrange- 
ments heretofore  mentioned." 

The  Reichstag,  or  lower  house,  is  elected  by 
universal  suffrage  in  electoral  districts  which 
were  originally  equal,  but  as  we  have  noted  are 
far  from  equal  now.  This  house  has  three  hun- 
dred and  ninety-seven  members,  of  whom  two 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK       101 

hundred  and  thirty-five  are  from  Prussia.  It 
sits  for  five  years,  but  may  be  dissolved  by  the 
Bundesrath  with  the  consent  of  the  Emperor. 
All  members  of  the  Bundesrath,  as  well  as  the 
chancellor,  may  speak  in  the  Reichstag.  Nor 
the  chancellor,  nor  any  other  executive  officer, 
is  responsible  to  the  Reichstag,  nor  can  be  re- 
moved by  its  vote,  and  the  ministers  of  the  Em- 
peror are  seldom  or  never  chosen  from  this  body. 
This  Reichstag  is  really  only  nominally  a  portion 
of  the  governing  body.  It  has  the  right  to  refuse 
to  pass  a  bill  presented  by  the  government,  but 
if  it  does  so  it  may  be  summarily  dismissed,  as 
has  happened  several  times,  and  another  election 
usually  provides  a  more  amenable  body. 

Of  the  various  political  parties  in  the  Reichs- 
tag we  have  written  elsewhere.  It  is,  perhaps, 
fair  to  say  that  such  powerful  parties  as  the  So- 
cialists and  the  Centrum  must  be  reckoned  with 
by  the  chancellor.  He  cannot  actually  trample 
upon  them,  nor  can  he  disregard  wholly  their 
wishes  in  framing  and  in  carrying  through  legis- 
lation. It  would  be  going  much  too  far  in  char- 
acterizing the  weakness  of  the  Reichstag  to  leave 
that  impression  upon  the  reader.  None  the  less 
it  remains  true  that  it  is  the  executive  who  rules 
and  has  the  whip-hand,  and  who  in  a  grave  crisis 
can  override  the  representatives  of  the  people 


102     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

assembled  in  the  Reichstag,  and  on  more  than 
one  occasion  this  has  been  done. 

It  seems  highly  unnecessary  to  announce  after 
this  description  of  the  imperial  constitution  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  in  Germany  as  democratic 
or  representative  government.  But  this  fact 
cannot  be  proclaimed  too  often  since  in  other 
countries  it  is  continually  assumed  that  this 
is  the  case.  All  sorts  of  deductions  are  made, 
all  sorts  of  illustrations  used,  all  sorts  of  legis- 
lative and  social  lessons  taught  from  the  example 
of  Germany,  without  the  smallest  knowledge 
apparently  on  the  part  of  those  who  make  them, 
that  Germany  to-day  is  no  more  democratic  than 
was  Turkey  twenty  years  ago. 

What  can  be  done  and  what  is  done  in  Ger- 
many has  no  possible  bearing  upon  what  can  be 
done  in  America  or  in  England.  All  analogies 
are  false,  all  illustrations  futile,  all  examples 
valueless,  for  the  one  reason  that  the  empire 
of  Germany  is  governed  by  one  man,  who  de- 
claims his  independence  of  the  people  and  admits 
his  responsibility  to  God  alone.  This  may  be 
either  a  good  or  a  bad  thing.  Certainly  in  many 
matters  of  economical  and  comfortable  govern- 
ment for  the  people — witness  more  particularly 
the  development  and  wise  control  of  their  mu- 
nicipalities— they  are  a  century  ahead  of  us,  but 


FREDERICK  TO  BISMARCK       103 

this  is  not  the  question  under  discussion.  The 
point  is,  that  a  compact  nation  under  strict 
centralized  control,  served  by  a  trained  horde 
of  officials  with  no  wish  for  a  change,  and 
backed  by  a  standing  army  of  over  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  men,  who  are  not  only  a  defence 
against  the  foreigner,  but  a  powerful  police 
against  internal  revolution,  cannot  serve  as  a 
model  in  either  its  successes  or  failures  for  a 
democratic  country  like  ours.  Where  in  Ger- 
many legislative  schemes  succeed  easily  when 
this  huge  bureaucratic  machine  is  behind  them, 
they  would  fail  ignominiously  in  a  country  lack- 
ing this  machinery,  and  lacking  these  pitia- 
bly tame  people  accustomed  to  submission. 

In  France,  for  example,  that  thrifty  and  indi- 
vidualistic folk  made  a  complete  failure  of  the  at- 
tempt to  foist  contributory  old-age  pensions  upon 
them,  and  I  doubt  whether  such  sumptuary  leg- 
islation can  succeed  with  us.  That,  however, 
is  neither  here  nor  there.  The  gist  of  the  mat- 
ter is,  that  because  such  things  succeed  in  Ger- 
many, gives  not  the  slightest  reason  for  sup- 
posing that  they  will  succeed  with  us.  If  this 
outline  of  their  history  and  this  sketch  of  their 
government  have  done  nothing  else,  it  must  have 
made  this  clear.  It  may  also  help  to  show  how 
vapid  is  the  talk  about  what  the  German  people 


104     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

will  or  will  not  do;  whether  they  will  or  will  not 
have  war,  for  example.  We  shall  have  war 
when  the  German  Kaiser  touches  a  button  and 
gives  an  order,  and  the  German  people  will  have 
no  more  to  say  in  the  matter  than  you  and  I. 


Ill 

THE  INDISCREET 

THE  casual  observer  of  life  in  England 
would  find  himself  forced  to  write  of 
sport,  even  as  in  India  he  would  write 
of  caste,  as  in  America  he  would  note  the  un- 
due emphasis  laid  upon  politics.  In  Germany, 
wherever  he  turns,  whether  it  be  to  look  at  the 
army,  to  inquire  about  the  navy,  to  study  the 
constitution,  or  to  disentangle  the  web  of 
present-day  political  strife;  to  read  the  figures 
of  commercial  and  industrial  progress,  or  the 
results  of  social  legislation;  to  look  on  at  the 
Germans  at  play  during  their  yachting  week  at 
Kiel,  or  their  rowing  contests  at  Frankfort,  he 
finds  himself  face  to  face  with  the  Emperor. 

The  student  visits  Berlin,  or  Potsdam,  or 
Wilhelmshohe ;  or  with  a  long  stride  finds  him- 
self on  the  docks  at  Hamburg  or  Bremen,  or 
beside  the  Kiel  Canal,  or  in  Kiel  harbor  facing 
a  fleet  of  war-ships;  or  he  lifts  his  eyes  into  the 
air  to  see  a  dirigible  balloon  returning  from  a 
voyage  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  toward 


105 


106     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

London  over  the  North  Sea,  and  the  Emperor 
is  there.  Is  it  the  palace  hidden  in  its  shrub- 
bery in  the  country ;  is  it  the  clean,  broad  streets 
and  decorations  of  the  capital;  is  it  a  discussion 
of  domestic  politics,  or  a  question  of  foreign  pol- 
itics, the  Emperor's  hand  is  there.  His  opinion, 
his  influence,  what  he  has  said  or  has  not  said, 
are  inextricably  interwoven  with  the  woof  and 
wreb  of  German  life. 

We  may  like  him  or  dislike  him,  approve  or 
disapprove,  rejoice  in  autocracy  or  abominate  it, 
admire  the  far-reaching  discipline,  or  regret  the 
iron  mould  in  which  much  of  German  life  is  en- 
cased, but  for  the  moment  all  this  is  beside  the 
mark.  Here  is  a  man  who  in  a  quarter  of  a 
century  has  so  grown  into  the  life  of  a  nation, 
the  most  powerful  on  the  continent,  and  one  of 
the  three  most  powerful  in  the  world,  that  when 
you  touch  it  anywhere  you  touch  him,  and  when 
you  think  of  it  from  any  angle  of  thought,  or 
describe  it  from  any  point  of  view,  you  find 
yourself  including  him. 

Personally,  I  should  have  been  glad  to  leave 
this  chapter  unwritten.  I  have  no  taste  for  the 
discussion  and  analysis  of  living  persons,  even 
when  they  are  of  such  historic  and  social  im- 
portance, and  of  such  magnitude,  that  I  am  thus 
given  the  proverbial  license  of  the  cat.  But  to 


THE   INDISCREET  107 

write  about  Germany  without  writing  about  the 
Emperor  is  as  impossible  as  to  jump  away  from 
one's  own  shadow.  When  the  sun  is  behind 
any  phase  or  department  of  German  life,  the 
shadow  cast  is  that  of  Germany's  Emperor. 

This  is  not  said  because  it  is  pleasing  to  whom- 
soever it  may  be,  for  in  Germany,  and  in  much 
of  the  world  outside  Germany,  this  situation  is 
looked  upon  as  unfavorable,  and  even  deplor- 
able; and  certainly  no  American  can  look  upon 
it  with  equanimity,  for  it  is  of  the  essence  of 
his  Americanism  to  distrust  it.  It  is,  however, 
so  much  a  fact  that  to  neglect  a  discussion  of 
this  personality  would  be  to  leave  even  so  slight 
a  sketch  of  Germany  as  this,  hopelessly  lop-sided. 
He  so  pervades  German  life  that  to  write  of  the 
Germany  of  the  last  twenty-five  years  without 
attempting  to  describe  William  the  Second, 
German  Emperor,  would  be  to  leave  every 
question,  institution,  and  problem  of  the  coun- 
try without  its  master-key. 

In  other  chapters  dealing  more  particularly 
with  the  political  development  of  Germany,  and 
with  the  salient  characteristics,  mental  and 
moral,  of  the  people,  we  shall  see  how  it  has 
come  about,  that  one  man  can  thus  impregnate 
a  whole  nation  of  sixty-five  millions  with  his 
own  aims  and  ambitions,  to  such  an  extent,  that 


they  may  be  said,  so  to  speak,  to  live  their 
political,  social,  martial,  religious,  and  even 
their  industrial,  life  in  him.  It  is  a  phenomenon 
of  personality  that  exists  nowhere  else  in  the 
world  to-day,  and  on  so  large  a  scale  and  among 
so  enlightened  a  people,  perhaps  never  before  in 
history. 

Nothing  has  made  scientific  accuracy  in  deal- 
ing with  the  most  interesting  and  most  important 
factors  in  the  world,  so  utterly  inaccurate  and 
misleading,  as  those  infallibly  accurate  and  im- 
personal agents,  electricity  and  the  sun.  If  one 
were  to  judge  a  man  by  his  photographs,  and  the 
gossip  of  the  press,  one  would  be  sure  to  know 
nothing  more  valuable  about  him  than  that  his 
mustache  is  brushed  up,  and  that  his  brows  are 
permanently  lowering.  Personality  is  so  evasive 
that  one  may  count  upon  it  that  when  a  machine 
says  "There  it  is!"  then  there  it  is  not!  You 
will  have  everything  that  is  patent  and  nothing 
that  is  pertinent. 

We  are  forever  talking  and  writing  about  the 
smallness  of  the  world,  of  how  much  better  we 
know  one  another,  and  of  how  much  more  we 
should  love  one  another,  now  that  we  flash 
photographs  and  messages  to  and  fro,  at  a  speed 
of  leagues  a  second.  Nothing  could  be  more 
futile  and  foolish.  These  things  have  empha- 


THE   INDISCREET  109 

sized  our  differences,  they  have  done  nothing 
to  realize  our  likeness  to  one  another.  We  are 
as  far  from  one  another  as  in  the  days,  late  in 
the  tenth  century,  when  they  complained  in 
England  that  men  learned  fierceness  from  the 
Saxon  of  Germany,  effeminacy  from  the  Flem- 
ing, and  drunkenness  from  the  Dane. 

As  probably  the  outstanding  figure  and  best- 
known,  superficially  known,  man  in  the  world, 
the  German  Emperor  has  escaped  the  notice  of 
very  few  people  who  notice  anything.  His  like- 
ness is  everywhere,  and  gossip  about  him  is  on 
every  tongue.  He  is  as  familiar  to  the  Ameri- 
can as  Roosevelt,  to  the  Englishman  as  Lloyd- 
George,  to  the  Frenchman  as  Dreyfus,  to  the 
Russian  as  his  Czar,  and  to  the  Chinese  and 
Japanese  as  their  most  prominent  political  figure. 
And  yet  I  should  say  that  he  is  comparatively 
little  known,  either  externally  or  internally,  as 
he  is. 

It  is  perhaps  the  fate  of  those  of  most  influ- 
ence to  be  misunderstood.  Of  this,  I  fancy, 
the  Emperor  does  not  complain.  Indeed,  those 
feeble  folk  who  complain  of  being  misunder- 
stood, ought  to  console  themselves  with  the 
thought  that  practically  all  our  imperishable 
monuments,  are  erected  to  the  glory  of  those 
whom  we  condemned  and  criticised;  starved 


110     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  stoned;  burned  and  crucified,  when  we  had 
them  with  us. 

William  II,  German  Emperor  and  King  of 
Prussia,  was  born  January  27,  1859,  and  be- 
came German  Emperor  June  15,  1888.  He  is, 
therefore,  in  the  prime  of  life,  and  looks  it.  His 
complexion  and  eyes  are  as  clear  as  those  of  an 
athlete,  and  his  eyes,  and  his  movements,  and 
his  talk  are  vibrating  w7ith  energy.  He  stands, 
I  should  guess,  about  five  feet  eight  or  nine, 
has  the  figure  and  activity  of  an  athletic  youth 
of  thirty,  and  in  his  hours  of  friendliness  is  as 
careless  in  speech,  as  unaffected  in  manner,  as 
lacking  in  any  suspicion  of  self-consciousness,  or 
of  any  desire  to  impress  you  with  his  importance, 
as  the  simplest  gentleman  in  the  land. 

Alas,  how  often  this  courageous  and  gentle- 
manly attitude  has  been  taken  advantage  of!  I 
have  headed  this  chapter  The  Indiscreet,  and  I 
propose  to  examine  these  so-called  indiscretions 
in  some  detail,  but  for  the  moment  I  must  ask: 
Is  there  any  excuse  for,  or  any  social  punish- 
ment too  severe  for,  the  man  who,  introduced 
into  a  gentleman's  house  in  the  guise  of  a  gen- 
tleman, often  by  his  own  ambassador,  leaves  it, 
to  blab  every  detail  of  the  conversation  of  his 
host,  with  the  gesticulations  and  exclamation 
points  added  by  himself?  To  add  a  little  to  his 


THE   INDISCREET  111 

own  importance,  he  will  steal  out  with  the  con- 
versational forks  and  spoons  in  his  pockets,  and 
rush  to  a  newspaper  office  to  tell  the  world  that 
he  has  kept  his  soiled  napkin  as  a  souvenir. 
The  only  indiscretion  in  such  a  case  is  wiien  the 
host,  or  his  advisers,  or  gentlemen  anywhere, 
heed  the  lunatic  laughter  of  such  a  social 
jackal. 

To  count  one's  words,  to  tie  up  one's  phrases 
in  caution,  to  dip  each  sentence  in  a  diplomatic 
antiseptic,  in  the  company  of  those  to  whom 
one  has  conceded  hospitality,  what  a  feeble 
policy!  Better  be  brayed  to  the  world  every 
day  as  indiscreet  than  that! 

It  is  a  fine  quality  in  a  man  to  be  in  love  with 
his  job.  Even  though  you  have  little  sympathy 
with  Savonarola's  fierceness  or  Wesley's  hard- 
ness, they  were  burning  up  all  the  time  with 
their  allegiance  to  their  ideals  of  salvation. 
They  served  their  Lord  as  lovers.  Many  men, 
even  kings  and  princes  and  other  potentates, 
give  the  impression  that  they  would  enjoy  a 
holiday  from  their  task.  They  seem  to  be 
harnessed  to  their  duties  rather  than  possessed 
by  them;  they  appear  like  disillusioned  hus- 
bands rather  than  as  radiant  lovers. 

The  German  Emperor  is  not  of  that  class. 
He  loves  his  job.  In  his  first  proclamation  to 


GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

his  people  he  declared  that  he  had  taken  over 
the  government  "in  the  presence  of  the  King  of 
kings,  promising  God  to  be  a  just  and  merciful 
prince,  cultivating  piety  and  the  fear  of  God." 
He  has  proclaimed  himself  to  be,  as  did  Frederick 
the  Great  and  his  grandfather  before  him,  the 
servant  of  his  people.  Certainly  no  one  in  the 
German  Empire  works  harder,  and  what  is  far 
more  difficult  and  far  more  self-denying,  no  one 
keeps  himself  fitter  for  his  duties  than  he.  He 
eats  no  red  meat,  drinks  almost  no  alcohol, 
smokes  very  little,  takes  a  very  light  meal  at 
night,  goes  to  bed  early  and  gets  up  early.  He 
rides,  walks,  shoots,  plays  tennis,  and  is  as  much 
in  the  open  air  as  his  duties  permit. 

It  is  not  easy  for  the  American  to  put  side  by 
side  the  attitudes  of  a  man,  who  is  the  auto- 
cratic master  and  at  the  same  time  declares 
himself  to  be  the  first  servant  of  his  people. 
Perhaps  if  it  is  phrased  differently  it  will  not 
seem  so  contradictory.  What  this  Emperor 
means,  and  what  all  princes  who  have  believed 
in  their  right  to  rule  meant,  was  not  that  they 
were  the  servants  of  their  people,  but  the  ser- 
vants of  their  own  obligations  to  their  people, 
and  of  the  duties  that  followed  therefrom.  If 
in  addition  to  this  the  claim  is  made  by  the  sov- 
ereign, that  his  right  to  rule  is  of  divine  origin, 


THE  INDISCREET  113 

then  his  service  to  his  obligations  becomes  of 
the  highest  and  most  sacred  importance. 

We  should  not  allow  our  democratic  prejudices 
to  stifle  our  understanding  in  such  matters.  We 
are  trying  to  get  clearly  in  perspective  a  ruler, 
who  claims  to  rule  in  obedience  to  no  mandates 
from  the  people,  but  in  obedience  to  God.  We 
could  not  be  ruled  by  such  a  one  in  America; 
and  in  England  such  a  ruler  would  be  deemed 
unconstitutional.  It  is  elementary,  but  neces- 
sary to  repeat,  that  we  are  writing  of  Germany 
and  the  Germans,  and  of  their  history,  tradi- 
tions, and  political  methods.  We  are  making  no 
defence  of  either  the  German  Emperor  or  the 
German  people;  neither  are  we  occupying  an 
American  pulpit  to  preach  to  them  the  superi- 
ority of  other  methods  than  their  own.  My  sole 
task  is  to  make  clear  the  German  situation,  and 
not  by  any  means  to  set  up  my  own  or  my  coun- 
trymen's standards  for  their  adoption.  I  am 
not  searching  for  that  paltry  and  ephemeral 
profit  that  comes  from  finding  opportunities  to 
laugh  or  to  sneer.  I  am  seeking  for  the  German 
successes,  and  they  are  many,  and  for  the  reasons 
for  them,  and  for  the  lessons  that  we  may  learn 
from  them.  Any  other  aim  in  writing  of  another 
people  is  ignoble. 

This  attitude  of  the  ruler  will  be  as  incom- 


114     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

prehensible  to  the  democratic  citizen  as  al- 
chemy, but,  in  order  to  draw  anything  like 
true  inferences  or  useful  deductions,  in  order  to 
understand  the  situation  and  to  get  a  true  like- 
ness of  the  ruler,  one  must  take  this  utterly  un- 
familiar and  to  us  incomprehensible  claim  into 
consideration,  and  acknowledge  its  existence 
whether  we  admit  the  claim  as  justifiable  or  not. 
The  relation  of  such  a  ruler  to  his  people  is  like 
that  of  a  Catholic  bishop  to  his  flock.  The 
contract  is  not  one  made  with  hands,  but  is  an 
inalienable  right  on  the  one  hand,  and  an  undis- 
severable  tie  upon  the  other.  Bismarck  wrote 
on  this  subject:  "Fur  mich  sind  die  Worte,  *  von 
Gottes  Gnaden,'  welche  christliche  Herrscher 
ihrem  Namen  beifiigen,  kein  leerer  Schall,  son- 
dern  ich  sehe  darin  das  Bekenntniss,  dass  die 
Fiirsten  das  Scepter  was  ihnen  Gott  verliehen 
hat,  nur  nach  Gottes  Willen  auf  Erden  fiihren 
wollen." 

On  several  occasions  the  German  Emperor 
has  made  it  unmistakably  clear  that  this  is  his 
view  of  the  origin  and  sanctity  of  his  responsi- 
bilities. "If  we  have  been  able  to  accomplish 
what  has  been  accomplished,  it  is  due  above  all 
things  to  the  fact  that  our  house  possesses  a 
tradition  by  virtue  of  which  we  consider  that 
we  have  been  appointed  by  God  to  preserve  and 


THE   INDISCREET  115 

direct,  for  their  own  welfare,  the  people  over 
whom  he  has  given  us  power."  These  words 
are  from  a  speech  made  in  1897  at  Bremen.  In 
1910,  at  Konigsberg,  he  declares:  "It  was  in 
this  spot  that  my  grandfather  in  his  own  right 
placed  the  royal  crown  of  Prussia  upon  his  head, 
insisting  once  again  that  it  was  bestowed  upon 
him  by  the  grace  of  God  alone,  and  not  by  par- 
liaments and  meetings  and  decisions  of  the 
people.  He  thus  regarded  himself  as  the  chosen 
instrument  of  heaven,  and  as  such  carried  out 
his  duties  as  a  ruler  and  lord.  I  consider  myself 
such  an  instrument  of  heaven,  and  shall  go  my 
way  without  regard  to  the  views  and  opinions 
of  the  day." 

Prince  Henry  of  Prussia,  the  popular,  and  de- 
servedly popular,  sailor  brother  of  the  Emperor, 
has  signified  his  entire  allegiance  to  this  doctrine 
by  saying  that  he  was  actuated  by  one  single 
motive:  "a  desire  to  proclaim  to  the  nations 
the  gospel  of  your  Majesty's  sacred  person,  and 
to  preach  that  gospel  alike  to  those  who  will 
listen  and  to  those  who  will  not." 

This  language  has  a  strange  and  far-away 
sound  to  us.  It  is  as  though  one  should  come 
into  the  market-place  with  the  bannered  pomp 
of  Milton's  prose  upon  his  lips.  The  vicious 
would  think  it  a  trick,  the  idle  would  look  upon 


116     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

it  as  a  heavy  form  of  joking,  the  intelligent 
would  see  in  it  a  superstition,  or  a  dream  of 
knighthood  that  has  faded  into  unrecognizable 
dimness.  Some  men,  on  the  other  hand,  might 
wish  that  all  rulers  and  governors  whatsoever 
were  equally  touched  with  the  sanctity  of  their 
obligations. 

It  is  somewhat  strange  in  this  connection  to 
remember,  that  we  all  wish  to  have  our  wives 
and  daughters  believers;  that  we  all  wish  to 
bind  to  us  those  whom  we  love  with  more 
sacred  bonds  than  those  which  we  ourselves 
can  supply.  We  are  none  of  us  loath  to  have 
those  who  keep  our  treasures,  believe  in  some 
code  higher  than  that  of  "honesty  is  the  best 
policy."  As  Archbishop  Whately  said:  "Hon- 
esty is  the  best  policy,  but  he  who  is  honest  for 
that  reason  is  not  an  honest  man." 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  appear  as  an  advocate 
of  the  divine  right  of  kings;  but  I  am  no  fit 
person  for  this  particular  task  if  I  have  only  a 
sniff,  or  a  guffaw,  as  an  explanation  of  another's 
beliefs.  History  sparkles  with  the  lives  of  men 
and  women,  who  proclaimed  themselves  mes- 
sengers and  servants  of  God,  obedient  to  him 
first,  and  utterly  and  courageously  negligent  of 
that  feline  commodity,  public  opinion.  Every 
man,  even  to-day, 


THE  INDISCREET  117 

"Who  each  for  the  joy  of  the  working,  and  each  in  his  separate 

star, 

Shall  draw  the  Thing  as  he  sees  It  for  the  God'  of  Things  as 
They  Are," 

has  a  grain  of  this  salt  of  divine  independence 
in  him.  To-day,  even  as  in  the  days  of  Pericles: 
"It  is  ever  from  the  greatest  hazards  that  the 
greatest  honors  are  gained,"  and  the  greatest 
hazard  of  all  is  to  shut  your  visor  and  couch 
your  lance  and  have  at  your  task  with  a  whis- 
pered: God  and  my  Right!  It  is  well  to  re- 
member that  under  no  government,  whether 
democratic  or  aristocratic,  has  the  individual 
ever  been  given  any  rights.  He  has  always 
everywhere  been  pointed  to  his  duties ;  his  rights 
he  must  conquer  for  himself. 

The  liberal  in  theology,  as  the  liberal  in 
politics,  has  perhaps  leaned  too  far  toward 
softness.  The  democratization  of  religion  has 
gone  on  with  the  rest,  and  in  our  rebound  from 
Calvin,  and  John  Knox,  and  Jonathan  Edwards, 
we  have  left  all  discipline  and  authority  out  of 
account.  We  have  preached  so  persistently  of 
the  fatherhood  of  God,  of  his  nearness  to  us,  of 
his  profound  pity  for  us,  that  we  have  lost  sight 
of  his  justice  and  his  power.  This  nearness  has 
become  a  sort  of  innocuous  neighborliness,  and 
God  is  looked  upon  not  as  a  ruler,  but  as  a 
vaporish  good  fellow  whose  chief  business  it  is 


118    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

to  forgive.  We  have  substituted  a  feverish- 
handed  charity  for  a  sinewy  faith,  and  are  ex- 
cusing our  divorce  from  divinely  imposed  duties, 
by  a  cheerful  but  illicit  intercourse  with  chance 
acquaintances,  all  of  whom  are  dubbed  social 
service. 

This  Cashmere-shawl  theology  is  as  idle  an 
interpretation  of  man's  relation  to  the  universe, 
and  far  more  debilitating,  than  any  that  has 
gone  before.  When  we  come  to  measure  rulers 
who  make  divine  claims  for  their  duties,  from 
any  such  coign  of  flabbiness  as  this,  no  wonder 
we  stand  dumb.  I  am  willing  to  concede  that 
perhaps  even  an  emperor  has  been  baptized 
with  the  blood  of  the  martyrs,  and  feels  himself 
to  be  in  all  sincerity  the  instrument  of  God;  if 
we  are  to  understand  this  one,  we  must  admit 
so  much. 

In  certain  departments  of  life,  we  not  only 
grant,  but  we  demand,  that  our  wives  and 
mothers  should  look  upon  their  special  duties 
and  peculiar  functions  as  divinely  imparted,  and 
as  beyond  argument,  and  as  above  coercion. 
This  assumption,  therefore,  of  inalienable  rights 
is  not  so  strange  to  us;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  an 
every -day  affair  in  most  of  our  lives.  This  par- 
ticular manifestation  of  it  is  all  that  is  new  or 
surprising.  We  Americans  and  English  look 


THE   INDISCREET  119 

upon  it  as  dangerous,  but  the  Germans,  more 
mystical  and  far  more  lethargic  about  liberty 
than  are  we,  are  not  greatly  disturbed  by  it. 
The  secular  press,  largely  in  Jewish  hands,  and 
the  new  socialist  members  of  the  Reichstag, 
jealous  of  their  prerogatives  but  unable  to  as- 
sert them,  criticise  and  even  scream  their  abhor- 
rence and  unbelief;  but  I  am  much  mistaken, 
if  the  mass  of  the  Germans  are  at  heart  much 
disturbed  by  their  Emperor's  assertions  of  his 
divine  right  to  rule.  A  conservative  member 
of  the  Reichstag  speaks  of,  "a  parliament  which 
will  maintain  the  monarch  in  his  strong  posi- 
tion as  the  wearer  of  the  German  imperial 
crown,  not  the  semblance  of  a  monarch  but  one 
that  is  dependent  upon  something  higher  than 
party  and  parliament  —  one  dependent  upon 
the  King  of  all  kings." 

To  a  thoroughbred  American,  with  two  and 
more  centuries  of  the  traditions  of  independence 
behind  him,  this  question  of  the  divine  right  of 
kings  is  a  commonplace.  He  is  a  king  himself, 
he  holds  his  own  rights  to  be  divine,  and  his 
influence  and  his  power  to  be  limited  only  by 
his  character  and  his  abilities,  like  that  of  any 
other  sovereign.  He  may  rule  over  few  or 
many,  he  may  control  the  destiny  of  only  one 
or  of  many  subjects,  he  may  be  well  known  or 


120     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

little  known,  but  that  he  is  a  sovereign  individual 
by  the  grace  of  God,  it  never  occurs  to  him  to 
doubt.  It  is  perhaps  for  this  reason  that  the 
real  American  is  placid  and  unself -conscious  be- 
fore this  claim.  It  is  those  who  admit  and  suf- 
fer from  the  exactions  and  tyrannies  of  such  a 
claim  that  he  pities,  not  the  man  who  makes  it, 
whom  he  distrusts.  I  carry  my  sovereignty  un- 
der my  hat,  says  the  American;  if  any  man  or 
men  can  knock  off  the  hat  and  take  away  the 
sovereignty,  there  is  a  fair  field  and  no  favor;  for 
those  who  whimper  and  complain  of  tyranny  he 
has  long  since  ceased  to  have  a  high  regard. 

That  William  the  Second  is  the  chief  figure 
of  interest  in  the  world  to-day  is  due,  not  alone 
to  this  assumption  of  a  divine  relation  to  the 
state,  or  to  his  own  vigorous  and  electric  per- 
sonality, but  to  the  freedom  to  develop  and  to 
express  that  personality.  Men  in  politics  have 
dwindled  in  importance  and  in  power,  as  the 
voters  have  increased  in  numbers  and  in  influ- 
ence. Genius  must  be  true  to  itself  to  bloom 
luxuriantly.  It  is  impossible  to  be  seeking  the 
suffrage  of  a  constituency  and  at  the  same  time 
to  be  wholly  one's  self.  The  German  Emperor 
is  unhampered,  as  is  no  other  ruler,  by  considera- 
tions of  popular  favor;  and  at  the  same  time  he 
directs  and  influences  not  Russian  peasants,  nor 


THE   INDISCREET 

Turkish  slaves,  but  an  instructed,  enlightened, 
and  ambitious  people.  This  environment  is 
unique  in  the  world  to-day,  and  the  Germans 
as  a  whole  seem  to  consider  their  ruler  a  valua- 
ble asset,  despite  occasional  vagaries  that  bring 
down  their  own  and  foreign  criticism  upon  him. 

Here  we  have  a  versatile  and  vigorous  per- 
sonality with  no  shadow  of  a  stain  upon  his 
character,  and  with  no  question  upon  the  part 
of  his  bitterest  enemy  of  the  honesty  of  his  in- 
tentions, or  of  his  devotion  to  his  country's  in- 
terests. So  far  as  he  has  been  assailed  abroad, 
it  is  on  the  score  that  he  has  made  his  country 
so  powerful  in  the  last  twenty-five  years  that 
Germany  is  a  menace  to  other  powers;  so  far 
as  he  has  been  criticised  at  home  it  is  on  the 
score  of  his  indiscretions. 

It  is  of  prime  importance,  therefore,  both  to 
glance  at  the  progress  of  Germany  and  to  ex- 
amine these  so-called  indiscretions.  Through- 
out these  chapters  will  be  found  facts  and  figures 
dealing  with  the  fairy-like  change  which  has 
taken  place  in  Germany  since  my  own  student 
days.  I  can  remember  when  a  chimney  was  a 
rare  sight.  Now  there  are  almost  as  many 
manufacturing  towTns  as  then  there  were  chim- 
neys. Leipzig  was  a  big  country  town,  Pforz- 
heim, Chemnitz,  Oschatz,  Elberfeld,  Riesa, 


Kiel,  Essen,  Rheinhausen,  and  their  armies  of 
laborers,  and  their  millions  of  output,  were  mere 
shadows  of  what  they  are  now. 

In  1873,  when  Bismarck  began  his  attempts 
at  railway  legislation,  Germany  was  divided  into 
sixty -three  "railway  provinces,"  and  there  were 
fifteen  hundred  different  tariffs,  and  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  it  was  only  as  late  as  1882 
that  the  state  system  of  railways  at  last  tri- 
umphed in  Prussia.  In  only  ten  years  the  rail- 
way trackage  has  increased  from  49,041  to 
52,216  miles;  the  number  of  locomotives  from 
18,291  to  26,612;  freight-cars  from  398,000  to 
558,000;  the  passengers  carried  from  804,000,000 
to  1,457,000,000;  and  the  tons  of  freight  car- 
ried from  341,000,000  tons  to  519,000,000  tons. 
In  Prussia  alone  there  are  1,000,000  more  horses, 
1,000,000  more  beef  cattle,  and  10,000,000  more 
pigs.  The  total  production  of  beet  sugar  in 
the  world  approximates  7,000,000  tons;  of 
this  amount  Germany  produces  2,500,000  tons. 
Great  Britain  consumes  more  sugar  per  head  of 
the  population  than  any  other  country,  and  of 
her  consumption  of  1,460,000  tons  of  beet  sugar 
all  of  it  is  produced  from  beets  grown  on  the 
continent.  Between  1885  and  1912  the  popu- 
lation increased  from  46,000,000  to  66,000,000. 
The  expenditure  on  the  navy  has  increased  in 


THE  INDISCREET  123 

the  last  ten  years  from  $47,500,000  to  $110,000,- 
000,  and  the  number  of  men  from  31,157  to 
60,805,  with  another  increase  in  both  money 
and  men,  voted  at  the  moment  of  this  writing 
in  the  summer  of  1912. 

The  debt  of  Germany,  exclusive  of  paper 
money,  in  1887  was  486,201,000  marks;  in  1903 
it  stood  at  2,733,500,000.  In  1911  the  funded 
debt  of  the  empire  was  4,524,000,000  marks, 
and  the  funded  debt  of  the  states  14,880,000,000; 
and  the  floating  debt  amounts  to  991,000,000, 
of  which  Prussia  alone  bears  610,000,000  and 
the  empire  300,000,000.  Between  the  years 
1871  and  1897  a  debt  of  $500,000,000  was  in- 
curred, bearing  an  average  interest  charge  of 
3%  per  cent.  In  the  year  1908  the  combined 
expenditures  of  the  states  and  of  the  empire 
reached  the  enormous  total  of  $1,775,000,000. 
The  debt  of  the  city  of  Berlin  alone  in  1910  had 
reached  $110,750,000  and  has  increased  in  the 
last  two  years. 

For  purposes  of  comparison  one  may  note  that 
our  own  later  national  budgets  run  roughly  to 
$1,000,000,000.  The  British  budget  for  1911 
was  $906,420,000.  After  the  French  war,  specu- 
lation on  a  large  scale  ensued.  The  payment  of 
the  $1,000,000,000  indemnity  had  a  bad  effect. 
As  has  often  happened  in  America,  money,  or 


124     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  mere  means  of  exchange,  was  taken  for 
wealth.  The  earth  will  be  as  cold  as  the  moon 
before  men  learn  that  the  only  real  wealth  is 
health.  Many  schemes  and  companies  were 
floated  and  after  1873  there  was  a  prolonged 
financial  crisis  in  Germany.  It  is  said  that 
bankruptcy  and  the  liquidation  of  bubble  com- 
panies entailed  a  loss  of  a  round  $90,000,000. 
It  was  in  1876-77,  when  Germany  was  thus 
suffering,  that  the  policy  of  protection  was 
mooted  and  finally  put  into  operation  by  Bis- 
marck in  1879.  Ten  years  later  the  laws  for 
accident,  old  age,  and  sickness  insurance  were 
passed,  at  the  instigation  and  under  the  direct 
influence  of  the  present  Emperor. 

The  tonnage  of  steam  vessels  under  4,000 
tons  in  Great  Britain  (net  tons)  was,  some  five 
years  ago,  8,165,527;  in  Germany  (gross  tons), 
977,410;  but  the  tonnage  of  steam  vessels  of 
4,000  tons  and  over  was  in  Great  Britain 
1,446,486,  in  Germany  1,119,537!  It  should  be 
added  that  no  small  part  of  Great  Britain's  big 
ships  belong  to  the  American  Shipping  Trust, 
sailing  under  the  British  flag.  Albert  Ballin  be- 
came a  director  of  the  Hamburg-American  line 
in  1886,  and  was  made  general  director  in  1900. 
During  his  directorship  the  capital  of  the  line  has 
been  increased  from  15,000,000  to  125,000,000 


THE   INDISCREET  125 

of  marks,  and  the  number  of  steamers  from  26 
to  170. 

Germany's  combined  export  and  import  trade 
in  1880  was  $1,429,025,000;  in  1890,  $1,875,- 
050,000;  and  in  1905  it  was  $3,324,018,000;  in 
1910,  $4,019,072,250.  The  German  production 
of  coal  and  coal  products  in  1910  was  the  highest 
in  its  history,  amounting  to  265,148,232  metric 
tons.  It  would  be  easy  enough  to  chronicle  the 
commercial  and  industrial  strides  of  Germany 
during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  by  the  com- 
pilation of  a  catalogue  of  figures.  It  is  not  my 
intention  to  persuade  the  reader  to  believe  in 
any  such  fantastic  theory  as  that  the  present 
Kaiser  is  entirely  responsible  for  this  progress. 
I  am  no  Pygmalion  that  I  can  make  an  Em- 
peror by  breathing  prayers  before  pages  of 
statistics. 

It  is  only  fair,  however,  in  any  sketch  of  the 
Emperor  to  give  this  skeleton  outline  of  what 
has  taken  place  in  the  empire  over  which  he 
rules,  and  which,  in  certain  quarters,  it  is  said, 
he  menaces  by  his  predilection  for  war.  These 
few  figures  spell  peace,  they  do  not  spell  war, 
and  the  ruler  who  has  some  700,000  armed  men 
at  his  back,  and  a  navy  the  second  in  strength 
in  the  world  guarding  his  shores,  and  a  mer- 
cantile marine  carrying  his  trade  which  is  hard 


126    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

on  the  heels  of  Great  Britain  as  a  rival,  but  who 
has  none  the  less  kept  his  country  at  peace  with 
the  world  for  twenty-five  years,  may  be  cred- 
ited at  least  with  good  intentions. 

It  may  be  said  in  answer  to  this  same  argu- 
ment that  this  building  and  training  and  en- 
riching of  a  nation  are  a  threat  in  themselves. 
True,  a  strong  man  is  more  dangerous  than  a 
weak  one;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  a  strong 
man  is  a  greater  safeguard  than  a  weak  one 
where  the  question  of  peace  is  at  stake.  It  is 
also  true  that  a  rich  and  powerful  man  must 
needs  take  more  precautions  against  attack  and 
robbery  than  a  tramp.  A  tramp  seldom  carries 
even  a  bunch  of  keys,  and  pays  no  premium  on 
fire,  accident,  or  burglary  insurance. 

William  the  Second  knows  his  history  as  well 
as  any  of  his  people,  and  incomparably  better 
than  his  English,  French,  or  American  critics. 
He  knows  that  only  twenty  years  after  the 
death  of  Frederick  the  Great,  the  Prussian  power 
went  down  before  Napoleon  like  a  house  of 
cards,  and  that  the  country's  humiliation  was 
stamped  in  bold  outlines  when  Napoleon  was 
received  in  Berlin  with  the  ringing  of  bells,  the 
firing  of  cannons,  and  he  himself  greeted  as  a 
savior  and  a  benefactor.  That  was  only  a  hun- 
dred years  ago.  Is  it  an  indiscretion,  then, 


THE   INDISCREET  127 

when  the  present  ruler,  speaking  at  Branden- 
burg the  5th  of  March,  1890,  says:  "I  look 
upon  the  people  and  nation  handed  on  to  me  as 
a  responsibility  conferred  upon  me  by  God,  and 
that  it  is,  as  is  written  in  the  Bible,  my  duty  to 
increase  this  heritage,  for  which  one  day  I  shall 
be  called  upon  to  give  an  account;  those  who 
try  to  interfere  with  my  task,  I  shall  crush"? 

On  his  accession  to  the  throne  his  first  two 
proclamations  were  to  the  army  and  the  navy, 
his  third  to  the  people.  On  the  14th  of  July, 
1888,  he  reviewed  the  fleet  at  Kiel,  and  for  the 
first  time  an  Emperor  of  Germany  and  King  of 
Prussia  appeared  there  in  the  uniform  of  an 
admiral.  In  April,  1897,  Queen  Victoria  cele- 
brated the  sixtieth  year  of  her  reign,  and  Prince 
Henry  represented  Germany,  appearing  as  ad- 
miral of  the  fleet  in  an  old  battle-ship,  the  King 
William.  On  the  24th  of  April  the  Emperor 
telegraphed  to  his  brother:  "I  regret  exceed- 
ingly that  I  cannot  put  at  your  disposition  for 
this  celebration  a  better  ship,  especially  when 
all  other  countries  are  appearing  with  their 
finest  ships  of  war.  It  is  a  sad  consequence  of 
the  manoeuvring  of  those  unpatriotic  persons 
who  have  obstructed  the  construction  of  even 
the  most  necessary  war-ships.  But  I  shall  know 
no  rest  till  I  have  placed  our  navy  on  a  par  for 


128     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

strength  with  our  army."  From  that  day  to 
this  he  has  gone  steadily  forward  demanding  of 
his  people  a  strong  army  and  a  powerful  fleet. 
He  now  has  both.  He  has  pulled  Germany  out 
of  danger  and  beyond  the  reach,  for  the  moment 
at  least,  of  any  repetition  of  the  catastrophe 
and  humiliation  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  This 
is  a  solid  fact,  and  for  this  situation  the  Em- 
peror is  largely,  one  might  almost  say  wholly, 
responsible. 

One  hears  and  one  reads  criticisms  of  the 
Emperor's  habit  of  speaking  and  writing  of 
"my  navy."  It  is  said  that  the  other  states  of 
Germany  have  borne  taxation  to  build  the  fleet, 
and  that  it  is  no  more  the  Emperor's  than  that 
of  the  King  of  Bavaria,  or  of  Wlirtemberg,  or  of 
Saxony.  This  is  the  petty,  pin-pricking  bab- 
ble of  boarding-school  girls,  or  of  those  official 
supernumeraries  who  have  turned  sour  in  their 
retirement.  Even  the  honest  democrat  is  made 
indignant.  If  the  German  navy  is  not  the 
work  of  William  the  Second,  then  its  parentage 
is  far  to  seek;  and  if  the  German  navy  is  not 
proud  to  be  called  "my  navy,"  it  is  wofully 
lacking  in  gratitude  to  its  creator. 

No  man  who  looks  back  over  his  own  career, 
say  of  twenty -five  years,  but  is  both  chastened 
and  amused.  He  is  chastened  by  the  unfore- 


THE   INDISCREET  129 

seen  dangers  that  he  has  escaped;  he  is  amused 
by  the  certificates  of  failure,  and  the  prophecies 
of  disaster,  that  always  everywhere  accompany 
the  man  who  takes  part  in  the  game  in  prefer- 
ence to  sitting  in  the  reserved  seats,  or  peeking 
through  a  hole  in  the  fence.  I  have  not  been 
honored  with  any  such  intimate  association  with 
the  German  Emperor  as  would  enable  me  to  say 
whether  he  has  a  highly  developed  sense  of 
humor  or  not.  I  can  only  say  for  myself,  that 
if  I  had  lived  through  his  Majesty's  last  twenty- 
five  years,  I  should  need  no  other  fillip  to  diges- 
tion than  my  chuckles  over  the  prophecies  of 
my  enemies. 

It  has  been  said  of  him  that  he  is  volatile; 
that  he  flies  from  one  task  to  another,  finishing 
nothing;  that  his  artistic  tastes  are  the  extrava- 
gant dreams  of  a  Nero;  that  he  loves  publicity 
as  a  worn  and  obese  soprano  loves  the  centre  of 
the  stage;  that  his  indiscretions  would  bring 
about  the  discharge  of  the  most  inconspicuous 
petty  official.  Others  speak  and  write  of  him 
as  a  hero  of  mythology,  as  a  mystic  and  a 
dreamer,  looking  for  guidance  to  the  traditions 
of  mediaeval  knighthood;  while  others,  again, 
dub  him  a  modernist,  insist  that  he  is  a  com- 
mercial traveller,  hawking  the  wares  of  his  coun- 
try wherever  he  goes,  and  with  an  eye  ever  to 


130    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  interests  of  Bremen  and  Hamburg  and  Essen 
and  Pforzheim.  Again,  you  hear  that  he  is  a 
Prussian  junker,  or  that  he  is  a  cavalry  officer, 
with  all  the  prejudices  and  limitations  of  such 
a  one;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  chided 
for  enlisting  the  financial  help  of  rich  Jews  and 
industrials.  He  is  versatile,  but  versatility  is  a 
virtue  so  long  as  it  does  not  extend  to  one's 
principles.  Every  man  who  has  profoundly  in- 
fluenced the  life  of  the  world,  from  Moses  to 
Lincoln,  has  been  versatile.  Carlyle  goes  so  far 
as  to  say:  "I  confess,  I  have  no  notion  of  a  truly 
great  man  that  could  not  be  all  sorts  of  men." 
He  speaks  French  well  enough  to  address  the 
Academic;  he  speaks  English  as  well  as  a  cul- 
tivated American,  and  no  one  speaks  it  more 
distinctly,  more  crisply,  more  trippingly  upon 
the  tongue,  these  days;  he  preaches  a  capital 
sermon;  he  is  an  accomplished  binder  of  books; 
he  is  a  successful  and  enthusiastic  farmer,  and 
he  is  frankly  audacious  in  his  loves  and  hatreds, 
his  ambitions  and  his  beliefs.  He  has,  in  short, 
no  vermin  blood  in  him  at  any  rate.  If  you 
do  not  like  him,  you  know  why;  and  if  you  do, 
you  know  why  as  easily.  He  even  knows  what 
he  believes  about  woman's  suffrage  and  about 
God,  a  rare  conciseness  of  thinking  in  these 
troublous  times. 


THE  INDISCREET  131 

There  stands  before  you  a  man  apparently  as 
sound  in  mind  and  in  body  as  any  man  who  treads 
German  soil;  a  man  of  great  vivacity  of  mind 
and  manner,  and  of  wholesome  delight  in  living; 
who  bears  huge  responsibilities  with  good  humor, 
and  that  most  unwholesome  of  all  things,  un- 
disputed power,  with  humility.  At  a  banquet 
in  Brandenburg  the  5th  of  March,  1890,  speak- 
ing of  his  many  voyages,  he  said:  "He  who, 
alone  at  sea,  standing  on  the  bridge,  with  noth- 
ing over  him  but  God's  heaven,  has  communed 
with  himself  will  not  mistake  the  value  of  such 
voyages.  I  could  wish  for  many  of  my  country- 
men that  they  might  live  through  similar  hours 
of  self-contemplation,  where  a  man  takes  stock 
of  what  he  has  tried  to  do,  and  of  what  he  has 
accomplished.  Then  it  is  that  a  man  is  cured 
of  vanity,  and  we  have  all  of  us  need  of  that." 

It  is  obvious  that  a  man  cannot  be  modest, 
as  the  above  quotation  would  indicate,  and  at 
the  same  time  preening  with  vanity;  a  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  and  a  Jew  peddler;  a  careless, 
dashing  cavalry  officer  or  proud  Prussian  squire, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  wary  and  astute  insur- 
ance agent  for  the  empire;  a  preacher  of  duty 
and  honor,  and  belief  in  God,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  political  comedian  deceiving  his  rivals 
abroad,  and  hoodwinking  his  subjects  at  home. 

Not  a  few  men,  even  of  slight  powers  of  ob- 


servation  and  of  meagre  experience,  have  noted 
the  strange  fact  that  a  blank  and  direct  state- 
ment of  the  truth  is  very  apt  to  be  put  down  as 
a  lie;  and  that  a  man  who  frankly  expresses  his 
beliefs  and  ambitions,  and  openly  goes  about 
his  business  and  his  pleasures  with  no  thought 
of  concealment,  is  often  regarded  as  Machiavel- 
lian and  deceitful,  because  a  timid  and  cautious 
world  finds  it  hard  to  believe  that  he  is  really  as 
audacious  as  he  appears. 

Even  those  with  the  most  limited  list,  of  the 
great  names  of  history  at  their  disposal,  cannot 
fail  to  remember  that  simplicity  and  directness 
have  in  the  persons  of  their  highest  exemplars 
been  misunderstood;  hunted  down  like  wild 
beasts,  burned,  crucified,  and  then,  when  they 
were  well  out  of  the  way,  crowned  and  held  up 
to  humanity  as  the  saviors  of  the  race.  We  will 
have  none  of  them  when  authority,  faith,  truth, 
courage,  show  us  our  distorted  images  in  the 
mirror  of  their  lives.  Crucify  him,  crucify  him! 
has  always  been  the  cry  when  such  a  one  asserts 
his  moral  kingship,  or  his  sonship  to  God,  or 
his  audacious  intention  to  live  his  own  life;  and 
in  less  tragic  fashion,  but  none  the  less  along 
the  same  lines,  the  world  tends  to  pick  at,  and 
to  fray  the  moral  garments  of,  its  leaders  still 
to-day.  When  such  a  one  succeeds  through 
sheer  simplicity,  then  that  last  feeble  epitaph 


THE   INDISCREET  133 

of  mediocrity  is  applied  to  him:  "He  is  lucky," 
because  so  few  people  realize  that  "luck,"  is 
merely  not  to  be  dependent  upon  luck. 

It  is  apparent  from  the  quotations  I  have 
given,  and  many  more  of  the  same  tenor  are  at 
our  disposal,  that  the  personality  we  are  study- 
ing has  a  very  definite  image  of  his  place  in  the 
world,  of  the  duties  he  is  called  upon  to  perform, 
of  his  rights  according  to  his  own  conception  of 
his  authority  and  responsibilities,  and  of  his 
intentions. 

It  is  equally  apparent  that  he  looks  upon  his- 
tory in  quite  another  way  than  that  usually 
accepted  by  the  modern  scientific  historian. 
Taine  and  Green  may  explain  everything,  even 
kings  and  emperors,  by  the  forces  of  climate, 
environment,  and  the  slow-heaving  influence  of 
the  people.  This  school  of  historians  will  tell 
you  how  Charlemagne,  and  Luther,  and  Crom- 
well, and  Napoleon  are  to  be  accounted  for  by 
purely  material  explanations. 

The  German  Emperor  apparently  believes 
that  the  history  of  the  world  and  the  develop- 
ment of  mankind  are  due  to  a  series  of  mighty 
factors,  mysteriously  endowed  from  on  high  and 
bearing  the  names  of  men,  and  not  infrequently 
the  names  of  emperors  and  kings.  He  is  con- 
tinually recalling  his  ancestors,  the  Great  Elec- 
tor, Frederick  the  Great,  and  William  I,  his 


134     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

grandfather.  These  men  made  Prussia  and 
Prussia  made  the  German  Empire,  he  declares. 
To  the  Brandenburg  Parliament  he  says:  "It 
is  the  great  merit  of  my  ancestors  that  they  have 
always  stood  aloof  from  and  above  all  parties, 
and  that  they  have  always  succeeded  in  making 
political  parties  combine  for  the  welfare  of  the 
wrhole  people." 

Due  to  a  quality  in  the  German  character 
that  need  not  be  discussed  here,  it  is  true  that 
they  have  been  led,  and  driven,  and  welded  by 
powerful  individuals.  No  Magna  Charta,  no 
Cromwell,  no  Declaration  of  Independence  is  to 
be  found  in  German  history.  No  vigorous  de- 
mand from  the  people  themselves  marks  their 
progress.  You  can  read  all  there  is  of  German 
history  in  the  biographies  of  the  Great  Elector, 
of  Frederick  William  the  First,  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  of  Yorck,  of  vom  Stein,  Hardenberg, 
Scharnhorst,  and  Bliicher,  of  Bismarck,  William 
I,  and  the  present  Emperor. 

WTiat  the  Kaiser  believes  of  history  is  true  of 
German  history.  If  he  asserts  himself  as  he 
does  in  Germany,  it  is  because  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  of  German  history  put  him  wholly 
and  entirely  in  the  right.  It  is  to  be  presumed 
that  what  every  student  of  German  history  may 
see  for  himself,  has  not  escaped  the  flexible  in- 
telligence of  the  present  Emperor,  and  that  is, 


THE  INDISCREET  135 

that  only  the  autocratic  kings  of  Prussia  suc- 
ceeded, and  that  only  an  autocratic  statesman 
succeeded,  in  bringing  the  whole  country  into 
line,  by  the  acknowledgment  of  the  King  of  Prus- 
sia, and  his  heirs  forever,  as  German  emperors. 

The  first  so-called  indiscretion  of  the  present 
Emperor  was  magnificent.  He  dismissed  Bis- 
marck two  years  after  he  came  to  the  throne. 
If  you  have  ever  been  the  owner  of  a  yacht  and 
your  sailing-master  has  grown  to  be  a  tyrant, 
and  you  have  taken  your  courage  in  your  hand 
and  bundled  him  over  the  side,  you  have  had 
in  a  microcosmic  way  the  sensations  of  such  an 
experience. 

It  is  said  that  Bismarck,  then  seventy-five 
years  old,  and  since  1862  accustomed  to  undis- 
puted power,  demurred  to  the  wish  of  the  Em- 
peror that  the  other  ministers  should  have  access 
to  him  directly,  and  not  as  heretofore  only 
through  the  chancellor.  It  is  said  too  that  the 
matter-of-fact  and  somewhat  cynical  Bismarck, 
had  but  scanty  respect  for  the  mystical  view  of 
his  grandfather  as  a  saint,  that  the  Emperor 
everywhere  proclaimed.  In  1896,  the  20th  of 
February,  in  speaking  of  his  grandfather,  he  re- 
fers to  him  as:  "The  Emperor  William,  that 
personality  which  has  become  for  us  in  some 
sort  that  of  a  saint.' 


Bismarck,  too,  objected  to  the  Emperor's 
policy  as  regards  the  treatment  of,  and  the 
legislation  for,  the  workingmen.  On  February 
the  5th,  1890,  he  writes  to  Bismarck:  "It  is  the 
duty  of  the  state  to  regulate  the  duration  and 
conditions  of  work  in  such  manner  that  the 
health  and  the  morality  of  the  workingman 
may  be  preserved,  and  that  his  needs  may  be 
satisfied  and  his  desire  for  equality  before  the 
law  assured." 

"Now  this  is  the  tale  of  the  Council  the  German 
Kaiser  decreed, 

"And  the  young  king  said: — 'I  have  found  it, 

the  road  to  the  rest  ye  seek: 
The  strong  shall  wait  for  the  weary,  and  the 

hale  shall  halt  for  the  weak; 
With  the  even  tramp  of  an  army  where  no  man 

breaks  from  the  line, 
Ye  shall  march  to  peace  and  plenty,  in  the 

bond  of  brotherhood — sign ! ' ' 

Whatever  the  reasons,  the  criticisms,  or  the 
causes,  the  man  whom  we  have  been  describing 
was  as  certain  to  dismiss  Bismarck  from  office, 
as  a  bird  is  certain  to  fly  and  not  to  swim.  The 
ruler  who  at  a  banquet  May  the  4th,  1891,  pro- 
claimed: ;' There  is  only  one  master  of  the 
nation:  and  that  is  I,  and  I  will  not  abide  any 


THE   INDISCREET  137 

other";  and  later,  on  the  16th  of  November,  in 
an  address  to  recruits  said:  "I  need  Christian 
soldiers,  soldiers  who  say  their  Pater  Nosier. 
The  soldier  should  not  have  a  will  of  his  own, 
but  you  should  all  have  but  one  will  and  that 
is  my  will;  there  is  but  one  law  for  you  and 
that  is  mine."  Again,  in  addressing  the  recruits 
for  the  navy  on  the  5th  of  March,  1895,  he  said 
to  them:  "Just  as  I,  as  Emperor  and  ruler, 
consecrate  my  life  and  my  strength  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  nation,  so  you  are  pledged  to  give 
your  lives  to  me."  Such  a  man  could  not  share 
his  rule  with  Bismarck. 

Bismarck  left  Berlin  amid  groans  and  tears. 
A  prop  had  been  rudely  pushed  from  beneath 
the  empire.  The  young  Emperor  would  stumble 
and  sway,  and  fall  without  this  strong  guide  be- 
side him.  Men  said  this  was  the  first  sign  of 
an  imperious  will  and  temper. 

There  is  an  Arab  proverb  which  runs:  "When 
God  wishes  to  destroy  an  ant  he  gives  it  wings." 
The  Kaiser  was  to  be  given  power  for  his  own 
destruction.  But  what  has  happened?  Abso- 
lutely nothing  of  these  evil  prophecies.  In  1884 
Bismarck  was  saying  to  Gerhard  Rohlfs,  the 
African  explorer:  "The  main  thing  is,  we  neither 
can  nor  really  want  to  colonize.  We  shall  never 
have  a  fleet  like  France.  Our  artisans  and 


138     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

lawyers  and  time-expired  soldiers  are  no  good 
as  colonists."  If  the  ideas  of  William  the 
Second  were  to  prevail,  it  was  time  that  Bis- 
marck went  over  the  side  as  pilot  of  the  ship  of 
state.  The  Kaiser  in  appropriate  terms  re- 
gretted the  loss  of  this  tried  public  servant  and 
said:  "However,  the  course  remains  the  same  - 
full  steam  ahead!" 

Three  days  after  the  Jameson  raid,  on  the 
3d  of  January,  1896,  the  Kaiser  telegraphed  to 
President  Kriiger:  "I  beg  to  express  to  you  my 
sincere  congratulations  that,  without  help  from 
foreign  powers,  you  have  succeeded  with  your 
own  people  and  by  your  own  strength  in  driv- 
ing out  the  armed  bands  which  attempted  to 
disturb  the  peace  of  your  country,  and  in  re- 
establishing order  and  in  defending  the  inde- 
pendence of  your  people  from  attacks  from 
outside." 

On  the  28th  of  October,  1908,  The  Daily  Tele- 
graph  of  London  published  a  long  interview 
with  the  Emperor,  the  gist  of  which  was  that 
the  British  press  and  people  continued  to  dis- 
trust him,  while  all  the  time  he  was  and  had 
been  the  friend  of  Great  Britain.  The  Emperor 
cited  instances  of  his  friendship,  declared  the 
English  were  as  mad  as  March  hares  not  to  be- 
lieve in  him;  insisted  that  by  reason  of  Ger- 


THE   INDISCREET  139 

many's  increasing  foreign  commerce,  and  on 
account  of  the  growing  menace  to  peace  in  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  Germany  was  determined  to  have 
an  adequate  fleet,  which  perhaps  one  day  even 
England  might  be  glad  to  have  alongside  of  her 
own. 

In  addition  to  these  two  incidents,  the  Em- 
peror had  written  a  letter  to  Lord  Tweedmouth, 
who  was  already  then  a  sick  man,  and  probably 
not  wholly  responsible,  in  which  it  was  said  he 
had  offered  advice  as  to  the  increase  of  the 
British  navy. 

I  have  described  these  furious  indiscretions, 
as  they  were  called  at  the  time,  together, 
though  they  were  years  apart;  for  these  utter- 
ances, and  the  constant  repetition  of  his  sense 
of  responsibility  to  God,  and  not  to  the  people 
he  governs,  are  the  heart  of  this  whole  conten- 
tion that  the  German  Emperor  is  indiscreet,  is 
indiscreet  even  to  the  point  of  damaging  his 
own  prestige,  and  injuring  his  country's  interests 
abroad. 

Of  all  these  so-called  indiscretions  there  is  the 
question  to  ask:  Should  these  things  have  been 
said?  Should  these  things  have  been  written? 
There  are  several  things  to  be  said  in  answer  to 
these  questions.  I  shall  treat  each  one  in  turn, 
but  all  these  statements  told  the  truth  and 


cleared  the  air.  The  Kriiger  telegram  was  not 
written  by  the  Emperor,  and  when  the  worst 
construction  is  put  upon  it,  it  expressed  what? 
It  was  merely  the  condemnation  of  freebooting 
methods,  a  condemnation,  be  it  said,  that  it  re- 
ceived from  many  right-minded  and  sincerely 
patriotic  Englishmen,  a  condemnation  too  that 
was  re-echoed  from  America.  Only  the  hon- 
orable and  winning  personality  of  one  of  the 
most  patriotic  and  charming  men  in  England, 
Sir  Starr  Jameson,  saved  the  raid  from  looking 
like  piracy.  A  brave  man  spoke  his  mind  about 
it,  and  he  happened  to  be  in  a  position  so  con- 
spicuous that  the  rumble  of  his  words  was 
heard  afar. 

So  far  as  The  Daily  Telegraph  interview  is 
concerned,  the  secret  history  of  the  incident  has 
never  been  fully  divulged.  One  may  say,  how- 
ever, without  fear  of  contradiction  that  the 
importance  of  the  matter  was  unduly  magni- 
fied, by  those,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  who 
had  something  to  gain  by  exaggeration.  It  is 
admitted  on  all  sides  by  those  best  informed 
that  at  any  rate  the  Emperor  was  neither  re- 
sponsible for  the  publication,  a  point  to  be  kept 
in  mind,  nor  for  the  choice  of  expressions  used 
in  the  interview. 

The  letter  to  Lord  Tweedmouth  was  a  friendly 


THE   INDISCREET  141 

communication  dealing  with  the  conditions  of 
the  British  and  German  fleets  in  the  past  and 
present,  and  without  a  word  in  it  that  might 
not  have  been  published  in  The  Times.  It  was 
quite  innocent  of  the  sinister  significance  placed 
upon  it  by  those  who  had  not  seen  it;  and  the 
British  Ministry  declined  to  publish  it  for  en- 
tirely different  reasons,  reasons  in  no  way  con- 
nected with  the  German  Emperor. 

As  we  read  The  Daily  Telegraph  interview 
to-day,  it  is  a  plain  document.  Every  word  of 
it  is  true.  The  moment  one  looks  at  it  from 
the  point  of  view,  that  the  Emperor  of  Germany 
is  sincerely  desirous  of  an  amiable  understand- 
ing with  England,  and  that  he  is,  for  the  peace 
and  quiet  of  the  world,  working  toward  that 
end,  there  is  no  adverse  criticism  to  be  passed 
upon  it.  The  English  are  thoroughly  and  com- 
pletely mistaken  about  the  attitude  of  the 
German  Emperor  toward  them.  He  is  far  and 
away  the  best  and  most  powerful  friend  they 
have  in  Europe,  and  I,  for  one,  would  be  willing 
to  forgive  him  were  he  irritated  at  their  mis- 
understanding of  him.  Personally,  I  have  not 
the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  had  France  or 
Russia  treated  the  German  Emperor  with  the 
cool  distrust  shown  him  by  the  British,  the  Ger- 
man army  and  fleet  would  have  moved  ere  this. 


142     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

To  those  who  know  the  Britisher  he  is  for- 
given for  those  luxuries  of  insular  stupidity 
which  punctuate  his  history.  I  know  what  a 
fine  fellow  he  is,  and  I  pass  them  by.  Mr. 
Churchill  speaks  of  the  German  fleet  as  a 
"luxury";  but  this  is  only  one  of  those  cold- 
storage  impromptus  that  a  reputation  for  clev- 
erness must  keep  on  hand,  and  when  Lord 
Haldane  in  a  clumsy  attempt  to  praise  the 
German  Emperor  speaks  of  him  as  "half  Eng- 
lish" I  laugh,  as  one  laughs  at  the  story  of  fat 
Gibbon  kneeling  to  propose  to  a  lady  and  re- 
quiring a  servant  to  get  him  on  his  legs  again. 
British  courting  often  needs  a  lackey  to  keep  it 
on  its  legs. 

Could  anything  be  more  burningly  irritable 
to  the  Germans  than  those  two  unnecessary 
statements?  For  the  moment  I  am  dealing 
with  the  attitude  of  the  Emperor  alone.  Of 
the  tirades  of  Chamberlain  and  Woltmann, 
Schmoller,  Treitschke,  Delbruck,  Zorn,  and 
other  under-exercised  professors,  one  may  speak 
elsewhere.  They  are  as  unpardonable  as  the 
yokel  rhetoric  of  our  British  friends.  Of  the 
Emperor's  insistence  upon  his  friendliness,  of  his 
outspoken  betrayal  of  his  real  feelings,  of  his 
audacious  policy  of  telling  the  blunt  truth,  I  am, 
alas,  no  fair  judge,  for  I  am  too  entirely  the  ad- 


THE  INDISCREET  143 

vocate  of  keeping  as  few  cats  in  the  bag  as 
possible.  If  these  things  had  not  been  said  and 
written,  it  is  true  that  there  would  have  been 
no  tumult;  having  been  said  and  written,  I  fail 
to  see  the  slightest  indication  in  the  political 
life  of  either  Germany  or  England  to-day  that 
they  did  harm.  Certainly,  from  his  own  point 
of  view  of  what  his  position  entails,  they  can 
hardly,  as  the  radicals  in  Germany  claim,  be 
considered  as  unconstitutional  or  beyond  his 
prerogative. 

When  the  German  Emperor  says:  "I,"  he 
refers  to  the  authority  and  responsibility  and 
dignity  of  the  German  imperial  crown.  He  is 
not  magnifying  his  personal  importance;  he  is 
emphasizing  the  dignity  and  importance  of 
every  German  citizen.  Let  us  try  to  under- 
stand the  situation  before  we  pass  judgment! 
Both  German  radicalism  and  German  socialism 
are  peculiar  to  Germany,  and  everywhere  mis- 
understood abroad.  They  both  demand  things 
of  the  government  for  the  easement  of  their 
position,  they  both  demand  certain  privileges, 
but  they  do  not  seek  or  want  either  authority 
or  responsibility.  Look  at  the  figures  of  their 
proportionate  increase  and  compare  this  with 
their  actual  influence  in  the  Reichstag  to-day. 
From  1881  to  1911,  here  is  the  percentage  of 


144     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 


votes  cast  by  the  five  representative  political 
parties : 


1881 

1893 

1911 

The  National  Liberals  

14.6 

12.9 

14.0 

The  Freisinnige  and  South  German 
Volkspartei  

23.2 

14.2 

13.1 

The    Conservatives,   including  the 
Deutsche  and  Freikonservative  .  .  . 
The  Centrum  (Catholic  party)  .... 
The  Social  Democrats  

23.7 
23.2 
6.1 

20.4 
19.0 

23.2 

12.4 
16.3 
34.8 

If  it  were  thought  for  a  moment  in  Germany 
that  the  Socialists  could  come  into  real  power, 
their  vote  and  the  number  of  their  representa- 
tives in  the  Reichstag  would  dwindle  away  in 
one  single  election. 

The  average  German  is  no  leader  of  men,  no 
lover  of  an  emergency,  no  social  or  political 
colonist,  and  he  would  shrink  from  the  initia- 
tive and  daring  and  endurance  demanded  by  a 
real  political  revolution  and  a  real  change  of 
authority,  as  a  hen  from  water.  The  very 
quality  in  his  ruler  that  we  take  for  granted  he 
must  dislike  is  the  quality  that  at  the  bottom 
of  his  heart  he  adores,  and  he  reposes  upon  it 
as  the  very  foundation  of  his  sense  of  security, 
and  as  the  very  bulwark  behind  which  he  makes 
grimaces  and  shakes  his  fist  at  his  enemies. 
Such  men  as  the  present  chancellor,  von  Beth- 


THE   INDISCREET  145 

mann-Hollweg,  a  very  calm  spectator  of  his 
country's  doings,  and  the  Emperor  himself, 
both  know  this. 

As  he  looks  at  history  and  at  life,  it  follows 
that  he  must  be  interested  in  everything  that 
concerns  his  people,  and  not  infrequently  take 
a  hand  in  settling  questions,  or  in  pushing  en- 
terprises, that  seem  too  widely  apart  to  be  dealt 
with  by  one  man,  and  too  far  afield  for  his  con- 
stitutional obligations  to  profit  by  his  interfer- 
ence. Certainly  German  progress  shows  that 
the  Germans  can  have  no  ground  to  quote: 
"Quicquid  delirant  reges,  plectuntur  Achivi," 
of  their  Emperor. 

In  the  discussion  of  this  question,  I  may  re- 
mind my  American  readers,  although  the  Ger- 
man constitution  is  dealt  with  elsewhere,  that 
there  is  one  difference  between  Germany  and 
America  politically,  that  must  never  be  left  out 
of  our  calculations.  Such  constitution  and  such 
rights  as  the  German  citizens  have,  were  granted 
them  by  their  rulers.  The  people  of  Prussia, 
or  of  Bavaria,  or  of  Wurtemberg,  have  not 
given  certain  powers  to,  and  placed  certain 
limitations  upon,  their  rulers;  on  the  contrary, 
their  rulers  have  given  the  people  certain  of 
their  own  prerogatives  and  political  privileges, 
and  granted  to  the  people  as  a  favor,  a  certain 


share  in  government  and  certain  powers,  that 
only  so  long  as  seventy  years  ago  belonged  to 
the  sovereign  alone.  It  is  not  what  the  people 
have  won  and  then  shared  with  the  ruler,  but 
it  is  what  the  ruler  has  inherited  or  won  and 
shared  with  the  people,  that  makes  the  ground- 
work of  the  constitutions  of  the  various  states, 
and  of  the  empire  of  Germany.  Nothing  has 
been  taken  away  from  the  people  of  Prussia  or 
from  any  other  state  in  Germany  that  they  once 
had;  but  certain  rights  and  privileges  have 
been  granted  by  the  rulers  that  were  once 
wholly  theirs.  Bear  this  in  mind,  that  it  is 
William  II  and  his  ancestors  who  made  Prussia 
Prussia,  and  voluntarily  gave  Prussians  certain 
political  rights,  and  not  the  citizens  of  Prussia 
who  stormed  the  battlements  of  equal  rights 
and  made  a  treaty  with  their  sovereign. 

The  King  of  Prussia  is  the  largest  landholder 
and  the  richest  citizen  of  Prussia.  We  have 
seen  what  he  expects  of  his  navy  and  of  his 
army.  Speaking  on  the  6th  of  September, 
1894,  he  says:  "Gentlemen,  opposition  on  the 
part  of  the  Prussian  nobility  to  their  King  is  a 
monstrosity." 

But  arid  details  are  not  history,  and  in  this 
connection  let  us  have  done  with  them.  I  have 
documented  this  chapter  with  dates  and  quota- 


THE  INDISCREET  147 

tions  because  the  situation  politically,  is  so  far 
away  from  the  experience  or  knowledge  of  the 
American,  that  he  must  be  given  certain  facts 
to  assist  his  imagination  in  making  a  true  pict- 
ure. I  have  done  this,  too,  that  the  Kaiser  may 
have  his  real  background  when  we  undertake 
to  place  him  understandingly  in  the  modern 
world.  Here  we  have  patriarchal  rule  still 
strong  and  still  undoubting,  coupled  with  the 
most  successful  social  legislation,  the  most  suc- 
cessful state  control  of  railways,  mines,  and 
other  enterprises ;  and  a  progress  commercial  and 
industrial  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
second  to  none. 

This  ruler  believes  it  to  be  essentially  a  part 
of  his  business  to  be  a  Lorenzo  de  Medici  to  his 
people  in  art;  their  high  priest  in  religion;  their 
envoy  extraordinary  to  foreign  peoples;  their 
watchful  father  and  friend  in  legislation  dealing 
with  their  daily  lives;  their  war-lord,  and  their 
best  example  in  all  that  concerns  domestic  hap- 
piness and  patriotic  citizenship.  He  fulfils  the 
words  of  the  old  German  chronicle  which  reads: 
"Merito  a  nobis  nostrisque  posteris  pater  patrise 
appelatur  quia  erat  egregius  defensor  et  fortis- 
simus  propugnator  nihili  pendens  vitam  suam 
contra  omnia  adversa  propter  justitiam  op- 
ponere." 


148     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

If  history  is  not  altogether  valueless  in  its 
description  of  symptoms,  the  Germans  are  of  a 
softer  mould  than  some  of  us,  more  malleable, 
rather  tempted  to  imitate  than  led  by  self- 
confidence  to  trust  to  their  own  ideals,  and  less 
hard  in  confronting  the  demands  of  other  peo- 
ples, that  they  should  accept  absorption  by 
them. 

Spurned  and  disdained  by  Louis  XIV,  they 
fawned  upon  him,  built  palaces  like  his,  dressed 
like  his  courtiers,  wrote  and  spoke  his  language, 
copied  his  literary  models,  and  even  bored  them- 
selves with  mistresses  because  this  was  the  fash- 
ion at  Versailles.  He  stole  from  them,  only  to 
be  thrown  the  kisses  of  flattery  in  return.  He 
sneered  at  them,  only  to  be  begged  for  his  favors 
in  return.  He  took  their  cities  in  time  of  peace, 
and  they  acknowledged  the  theft  by  a  smirking 
adulation  that  he  allowed  one  of  their  number 
to  be  crowned  a  king. 

As  for  Napoleon,  he  performed  a  prolonged 
autopsy  upon  the  Germans.  They  were  dis- 
membered or  joined  together  as  suited  his 
plans.  At  his  beck  they  fought  against  one  an- 
other, or  against  Russia,  or  against  England. 
He  tossed  them  crowns,  that  they  still  wear 
proudly,  as  a  master  tosses  biscuits  to  obedient 
spaniels.  He  put  his  poor  relatives  to  rule  over 


THE   INDISCREET  149 

them,  here  and  there,  and  they  were  grateful. 
He  marched  into  their  present  capital,  took 
away  their  monuments,  and  the  sword  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  and  they  hailed  him  with  tears 
and  rejoicing  as  their  benefactor,  while  their 
wittiest  poet  and  sweetest  singer,  lauded  him 
to  the  skies. 

It  is  unpleasant  to  recall,  but  quite  unfair  to 
forget,  these  happenings  of  the  last  two  hundred 
years  in  the  history  of  the  German  people. 
What  would  any  man  say,  after  this,  was  their 
greatest  need,  if  not  self-confidence;  if  not 
twenty-five  years  of  peace  to  enable  them  to 
recover  from  their  beatings  and  humiliation; 
if  not  a  powerful  army  and  navy  to  give  them 
the  sense  of  security,  by  which  alone  prosperity 
and  pride  in  their  accomplishments  and  in 
themselves  can  be  fostered;  if  not  a  ruler  who 
holds  ever  before  their  eyes  their  ideals  and  the 
unfaltering  energy  required  of  them  to  attain 
them! 

What  nation  would  not  be  self-conscious  after 
such  dire  experiences?  What  nation  would  not 
be  tenderly  sensitive  as  to  its  treatment  by 
neighboring  powers?  What  nation  would  not 
be  even  unduly  keen  to  resent  any  appearance 
of  an  attempt  to  jostle  it  from  its  hard-won 
place  in  the  sun?  Their  self -consciousness  and 


150     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

sensitiveness  and  vanity  are  patent,  but  they 
are  pardonable.  As  the  leader  of  the  Conserva- 
tive party  in  the  Reichstag,  Doctor  von  Heyde- 
brandt,  speaking  at  Breslau  in  October,  1911, 
anent  the  Morocco  controversy,  said,  after  al- 
luding to  the  "bellicose  impudence"  of  Lloyd- 
George:  "The  [British]  ministry  thrusts  its  fist 
under  our  nose,  and  declares,  I  alone  command 
the  world.  It  is  bitterly  hard  for  us  who  have 
1870  behind  us."  They  feel  that  they  should 
no  longer  be  treated  to  such  bumptiousness. 

I  trust  that  I  am  no  swashbuckler,  but  I  have 
the  greatest  sympathy  with  the  present  Em- 
peror in  his  capacity  as  war-lord,  and  in  his  insis- 
tent stiffening  of  Germany's  martial  backbone. 

When  shall  we  all  recover  from  a  certain  in- 
ternational sickliness  that  keeps  us  all  feverish? 
The  continual  talk  and  writing  about  interna- 
tional friendships,  being  of  the  same  family,  or 
the  same  race,  the  cousin  propagandism  in 
short,  is  irritating,  not  helpful.  I  do  not  go  to 
Germany  to  discover  how  American  is  Germany, 
nor  to  England  to  discover  how  American  is 
England;  but  to  Germany  to  discover  how 
German  is  Germany,  to  England  to  see  how 
English  is  England.  I  much  prefer  Americans 
to  either  Germans  or  Englishmen,  and  they  pre- 
fer Germans  or  Englishmen, -as  the  case  may  be, 


THE   INDISCREET  151 

to  Americans.  What  spurious  and  milksoppy 
puppets  we  should  be  if  it  were  not  so.  So  long 
as  there  are  praters  going  about  insisting  that 
Germany,  with  a  flaxen  pig-tail  down  her  back, 
and  England,  in  pumps  instead  of  boots,  and  a 
poodle  instead  of  a  bulldog,  shall  sit  forever  in 
the  moonlight  hand  in  hand;  or  that  America 
shall  become  a  dandy,  shave  the  chin-whisker, 
wear  a  Latin  Quarter  butterfly  tie  of  red,  white, 
and  blue,  and  thrum  a  banjo  to  a  little  brown 
lady  with  oblique  eyes  and  a  fan,  all  day  long; 
just  so  long  will  the  bulldog  snarl,  the  flaxen- 
haired  maiden  look  sulky,  the  chin-whisker  be- 
come stiffer  and  more  provocative,  and  the 
fluttering  fan  seem  to  threaten  blows. 

We  have  been  surfeited  with  peace  talk  till 
we  are  all  irritable.  One  hundredth  part  of  an 
ounce  of  the  same  quality  of  peace  powders  that 
we  are  using  internationally  would,  if  prescribed 
to  a  happy  family  in  this  or  any  other  land, 
lead  to  dissensions,  disobedience,  domestic  dis- 
aster, and  divorce.  Mr.  Carnegie  will  have 
lived  long  enough  to  see  more  wars  and  inter- 
national disturbances,  and  more  discontent  born 
of  superficial  reading,  than  any  man  in  history 
who  was  at  the  same  time  so  closely  connected 
with  their  origin.  Perhaps  it  were  better  after 
all  if  our  millionaires  were  educated! 


152     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  peace  party  need  war  just  as  the  atheists 
need  God,  otherwise  they  have  nothing  to  deny, 
nothing  to  attack.  Peace  is  a  negative  thing 
that  no  one  really  wants,  certainly  not  the  kind 
of  peace  of  which  there  is  so  much  talking 
to-day,  which  is  a  kind  of  castrated  patriotism. 
Peace  is  not  that.  Peace  can  never  be  born  of 
such  impotency.  When  German  statesmen  de- 
clare roundly  that  they  will  not  discuss  the 
question  of  disarmament,  they  are  merely  say- 
ing that  they  will  not  be  traitors  to  their  coun- 
try. If  the  Emperor  rattles  the  sabre  occasion- 
ally, it  is  because  the  time  has  not  come  yet, 
when  this  German  people  can  be  allowed  to 
forget  what  they  have  suffered  from  foreign 
conquerors,  and  what  they  must  do  to  protect 
themselves  from  such  a  repetition  of  history. 

When  the  final  judgment  is  passed  upon  the 
Emperor,  we  must  recall  his  deep  religious  feel- 
ing that  he  is  inevitably  an  instrument  of  God; 
his  ingrained  and  ineradicable  method  of  read- 
ing history  as  though  it  were  a  series  of  the  ipse 
dixits  of  kings;  his  complacent  neglect  of  how 
the  work  of  the  world  is  done  by  patient  labor; 
of  how  works  of  art  are  only  born  of  travail  and 
tears:  his  obsession  by  that  curious  psychology 
of  kings  that  leads  them  to  believe  that  they 
are  somehow  different,  and  under  other  laws, 


THE   INDISCREET  153 

as  though  they  lived  in  another  dimension  of 
space.  In  addition,  he  is  a  man  of  unusually 
rapid  mental  machinery,  of  overpowering  self- 
confidence,  of  great  versatility,  of  many  advan- 
tages of  training  and  experience,  and,  above  all, 
he  is  unhampered.  He  is  answerable  directly 
to  no  one,  to  no  parliament,  to  no  minister,  to 
no  people.  He  is  father,  guardian,  guide,  school- 
master, and  priest,  but  in  no  sense  a  servant  re- 
sponsible to  any  master  save  one  of  his  own 
choosing. 

The  only  wonder  is  that  he  is  not  insupport- 
able. Those  who  have  come  under  the  spell  of 
his  personality  declare  him  to  be  the  most  de- 
lightful of  companions;  what  Germany  has 
grown  to  be  under  his  reign  of  twenty -five  years 
all  the  world  knows,  much  of  the  world  envies, 
some  of  the  world  fears;  what  his  own  people 
think  of  him  can  best  be  expressed  by  the  state- 
ment that  his  supremacy  was  never  more  as- 
sured than  to-day. 

I  agree  that  no  one  man  can  be  credited  with 
the  astonishing  expansion  of  Germany  in  all 
directions  in  the  last  thirty  years;  but  so  inter- 
woven are  the  advice  and  influence,  the  ambi- 
tions and  plans,  of  the  German  Emperor  with 
the  progress  of  the  German  people,  that  this  one 
personality  shares  his  country's  successes  as  no 


154     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

single  individual  in  any  other  country  can  be 
said  to  do. 

Whether  he  likes  Americans  or  not  one  can 
hardly  know.  No  doubt  he  has  made  many  of 
them  think  so;  and,  alas,  we  suffer  from  a 
national  hallucination  that  we  are  liked  abroad, 
when  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  are  no  more  liked 
than  others;  and  in  cultured  centres  we  are  in 
addition,  laughed  at  by  the  careless  and  sneered 
at  by  the  sour. 

That  the  Kaiser  is  liked  by  Americans,  both 
by  those  who  have  met  him  and  by  those  who 
have  not,  is,  I  think,  indisputable.  He  is  of 
the  stuff  that  would  have  made  a  first-rate 
American.  He  would  have  been  a  sovereign 
there  as  he  is  a  sovereign  here.  He  would  have 
enjoyed  the  risks,  and  turmoil,  and  competition; 
he  would  have  enjoyed  the  fine,  free  field  of 
endeavor,  and  he  would  have  jousted  with  the 
best  of  us  in  our  tournament  of  life,  which  has 
trained  as  many  knights  sans  peur  et  sans 
reproche  as  any  country  in  the  world. 

I  believe  in  a  man  who  takes  what  he  thinks 
belongs  to  him,  and  holds  it  against  the  world; 
in  the  man  who  so  loves  life  that  he  keeps  a 
hearty  appetite  for  it  and  takes  long  draughts 
of  it;  who  is  ever  ready  to  come  back  smiling 
for  another  round  with  the  world,  no  matter 


THE  INDISCREET  155 

how  hard  he  has  been  punished.  I  believe  that 
God  believes  in  the  man  who  believes  in  Him, 
and  therefore  in  himself.  Why  should  I  debar 
a  man  from  my  sympathy  because  he  is  a  king 
or  an  emperor?  I  admire  your  courage,  Sir;  I 
love  your  indiscretions;  I  applaud  your  faith 
in  your  God,  and  your  confidence  in  yourself, 
and  your  splendid  service  to  your  country. 
Without  you  Germany  would  have  remained  a 
second-rate  power.  Had  you  been  what  your 
critics  pretend  that  they  would  like  you  to  be, 
Germany  Nvould  have  been  still  ruling  the 
clouds. 

Here's  long  life  to  your  power,  Sir,  and  to 
your  possessions,  and  to  you!  And  as  an 
Anglo-Saxon,  I  thank  God,  that  all  your  coun- 
trymen are  not  like  you! 


158     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

5,000,000.  It  is  calculated  that  there  is  a  daily, 
a  weekly,  and  a  monthly  magazine  circulated 
for  every  single  family  in  America.  Not  an 
unmixed  blessing,  by  any  means,  when  one  re- 
members that  thousands,  untrained  to  think 
and  uninterested,  are  thus  dusted  with  the 
widely  blown  comments  of  undigested  news. 
Editorial  comment  of  any  serious  value  is,  of 
course,  impossible,  and  the  readers  are  given  a 
strange  variety  of  unwholesome  intellectual  food 
to  gulp  down,  with  mental  dyspepsia  sure  to 
follow,  a  disease  which  is  already  the  curse  of 
the  times  in  America,  where  superficiality  and 
insincerity  are  leading  the  social  and  political 
dance. 

To  carry  the  comparison  further,  there  are 
22,806  newspapers  published  in  America;  9,500 
in  England;  8,049  in  Germany;  and  6,681  in 
France:  or  1  for  every  4,100  of  the  population 
in  America;  1  for  every  4,700  in  Great  Britain; 
1  for  every  7,800  in  Germany,  and  1  for  every 
5,900  in  France. 

That  a  prime  minister  should  have  been  a 
contributor  to  the  press,  as  was  Lord  Salisbury; 
that  a  correspondent  or  editorial  writer  of  a 
newspaper  should  find  his  way  into  cabinet  cir- 
cles, into  diplomacy,  or  into  high  office  in  the 
colonies;  that  the  editor  and  owner  of  a  great 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     159 

newspaper  should  become  an  ambassador  to 
England,  as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Reid,  is  impos- 
sible in  Germany.  The  character  of  the  men 
who  take  up  the  profession  of  journalism  suf- 
fers from  the  lack  of  distinction  and  influence 
of  their  task.  Raymond,  Greeley,  Dana,  Laf- 
fan,  Godkin,  in  America,  and  Delane,  Hutton, 
Lawson,  and  their  successors,  Garvin,  Strachey, 
Robinson,  in  England,  are  impossible  products 
of  the  German  journalistic  soil  at  present. 

There  have  been  great  changes,  and  the  place 
of  the  newspaper  and  the  power  of  the  journalist 
is  increasing  rapidly,  but  the  stale  atmosphere  of 
censordom  hangs  about  the  press  even  to-day. 
Freedom  is  too  new  to  have  bred  many  powerful 
pens  or  personalities,  and  the  inconclusive  re- 
sults of  political  arguments,  written  for  a  people 
who  are  comparatively  apathetic,  lessen  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  political  journalist.  There  are 
not  three  editors  in  Germany  who  receive  as 
much  as  six  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  the 
majority  are  paid  from  twelve  hundred  to  three 
thousand  a  year.  This  does  not  make  for  inde- 
pendence. I  am  no  believer  in  great  wealth  as 
an  incentive  to  activity,  but  certainly  solvency 
makes  for  emancipation  from  the  more  debasing 
forms  of  tyranny. 

Several  of  the  more  popular  newspapers  are 


IV 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES  AND 
THE  PRESS 

IN  the  days  when  Bismarck  was  welding  the 
German  states  into  a  federal  organization 
and  finally  into  an  empire,  he  used  the  press 
to  spray  his  opinions,  wishes,  and  suspicions  over 
those  he  wished  to  instruct  or  to  influence.  He 
used  it,  too,  to  threaten  or  to  mislead  his  enemies 
at  home  and  abroad.  The  Hamburger  Nachricht- 
en  was  the  newspaper  for  which  he  wrote  at 
one  time,  and  which  remained  his  confidential 
organ,  though  as  his  power  grew  he  used  other 
journals  and  journalists  as  well. 

As  Germany  has  few  traditions  of  freedom, 
having  rarely  won  liberty  as  a  united  people, 
but  having  been  beaten  into  national  unity  by 
her  political  giants,  or  her  robuster  sovereigns, 
so  the  press  before  and  during  Bismarck's  long 
reign,  from  1862  to  1890,  was  kept  well  in  hand 
by  those  who  ruled.  It  is  only  lately  that 
caricature,  criticism,  and  opposition  have  had 
freer  play.  That  a  journalist  like  Maximilian 

Harden   (a  friend  and  confidant  of  Bismarck, 

156 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     157 

by  the  way)  should  be  permitted  to  write  with- 
out rebuke  and  without  punishment  that  the 
present  Kaiser  "has  all  the  gifts  except  one, 
that  of  politics,"  marks  a  new  license  in  journal- 
istic debate.  That  this  same  person  was  able, 
single-handed,  to  bring  about  the  exposure  and 
downfall  of  a  cabal  of  decadent  courtiers  whose 
influence  with  the  Emperor  was  deplored,  proves 
again  how  completely  the  German  press  has 
escaped  from  certain  leading-strings.  A  sharp 
criticism  of  the  Emperor  in  die  Post,  even  as 
lately  as  1911,  excited  great  interest,  and  was 
looked  upon  as  a  very  daring  performance. 

There  are  some  four  thousand  daily  and  more 
than  three  thousand  weekly  and  monthly  pub- 
lications in  Germany  to-day;  but  neither  the 
press  as  a  whole,  nor  the  journalists,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  exert  the  influence  in  either  society 
or  politics  of  the  press  in  America  and  in 
England.  As  compared  with  Germany,  one  is 
at  once  impressed  with  the  greater  number  of 
journals  and  their  more  effective  distribution  at 
home.  In  America  there  are  £,472  daily  papers; 
16,269  weeklies;  and  2,769  monthlies.  Tri- 
weekly and  quarterly  publications  added  bring 
the  total  to  22,806.  One  group  of  200  daily 
papers  claim  a  circulation  of  10,000,000,  while 
five  magazines  have  a  total  circulation  of 


160     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

owned  and  controlled  by  the  Jews,  and  to  the 
American,  with  no  inborn  or  traditional  preju- 
dice against  the  Jews  as  a  race,  it  is  somewhat 
difficult  to  understand  the  outspoken  and  uncon- 
cealed suspicion  and  dislike  of  them  in  Germany. 
There  is  no  need  to  mince  matters  in  stating 
that  this  suspicion  and  dislike  exist.  A  comedy 
called  "The  Five  Frankfurters"  has  been  given 
in  all  the  principal  cities  during  the  last  year 
and  has  had  a  long  run  in  Berlin.  It  is  a  scath- 
ing caricature  of  certain  Jewish  peculiarities  of 
temperament  and  ambition. 

There  is  even  an  anti-semitic  party,  small 
though  it  be,  in  the  Reichstag,  while  the  party 
of  the  Centre,  of  the  Conservatives  and  the 
Agrarians,  is  frankly  anti-semitic  as  well.  No 
Jew  can  become  an  officer  in  the  army,  no  Jew 
is  admitted  to  one  of  the  German  corps  in  the 
universities,  no  Jew  can  hold  office  of  importance 
in  the  state,  and  I  presume  that  no  unbaptized 
Jew  is  received  at  court.  I  am  bound  to  record 
my  personal  preference  for  the  English  and  Amer- 
ican treatment  of  the  Jew.  In  England  they 
have  made  a  Jew  their  prime  minister,  and  in 
America  we  offer  him  equal  opportunities  with 
other  men,  and  applaud  him  whole-heartedly 
when  he  succeeds,  and  thump  him  soundly  with 
our  criticism  when  he  misbehaves.  The  Ger- 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES    161 

man  fears  him ;  we  do  not.  We  have  made  Jews 
ambassadors,  they  have  served  in  our  army  and 
navy,  and  not  a  few  of  them  rank  among  our 
sanest  and  most  generous  philanthropists. 

To  a  certain  extent  society  of  the  higher  and 
official  class  shuts  its  doors  against  him.  One 
of  the  well-known  restaurants  in  Berlin,  until 
the  death  of  its  founder,  not  long  ago,  refused 
admission  to  Jews. 

I  venture  to  say  that  no  intelligent  American 
stops  to  think  whether  the  Speyer  brothers,  or 
Kahn,  or  Schiff,  or  the  members  of  the  house  of 
Rothschild,  are  Jews  or  not,  in  estimating  their 
political,  social,  and  philanthropic  worth.  Even 
as  long  ago  as  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury the  great  strife  between  the  princes  of  Ger- 
many and  the  free  cities  ceased,  in  order  that 
both  might  unite  to  plunder  the  Jews. 

Luther  preached:  "Burn  their  synagogues  and 
schools;  what  will  not  burn  bury  with  earth  that 
neither  stone  nor  rubbish  remain."  "In  like 
manner  break  into  and  burn  their  houses." 
"Forbid  their  rabbis  to  teach  on  pain  of  life 
and  limb."  "Take  away  all  their  prayer-books 
and  Talmuds,  in  which  are  nothing  but  godless- 
ness,  lies,  cursing,  and  swearing."  In  the  chron- 
icles of  the  time  occurs  frequently  "  Judsei  occisi, 
combusti." 


162     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  German  comes  by  his  dislike  of  the  Jew 
through  centuries  of  traditional  conflict,  plun- 
der, and  hatred,  and  the  very  moulder  of  the 
present  German  speech,  Luther,  was  a  furious 
offender.  The  Jews  have  been  materialists 
through  all  ages,  claim  the  Germans:  "The  Jews 
require  a  sign,  and  the  Greeks  seek  after  wisdom; 
but  we  preach  Christ  crucified,  unto  the  Jews  a 
stumbling-block,  and  unto  the  Greeks  foolish- 
ness." It  is  to  be  in  our  day  the  battle  of  battles, 
they  claim,  whether  we  are  to  be  socially,  mor- 
ally, and  politically  orientalized  by  this  advance 
guard  of  the  Orient,  the  Jews,  or  whether  we  are 
to  preserve  our  occidental  ideals  and  traditions. 
Many  more  men  see  the  conflict,  they  maintain, 
than  care  to  take  part  in  it.  The  money-mar- 
kets of  the  world  are  ramparts  that  few  men 
care  to  storm,  but,  if  the  independent  and  the 
intelligent  do  not  withstand  this  semitization  of 
our  institutions,  the  ignorant  and  the  degraded 
will  one  day  take  the  matter  into  their  own 
hands,  as  they  have  done  before,  and  as  they  do 
to  this  day  in  some  parts  of  Russia. 

There  are  600,000  Jews  in  Germany,  400,000 
of  them  in  Prussia  and  100,000  of  these  in  Ber- 
lin. In  New  York  City  alone  there  are  more 
than  900,000.  They  are  always  strangers  in  our 
midst.  They  are  of  another  race.  They  have 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     163 

other  standards  and  other  allegiances.  Perhaps 
we  are  all  of  us,  the  most  enlightened  of  us, 
provincial  at  bottom,  we  like  to  know  who  and 
what  our  neighbors  are,  and  whence  they  came ; 
and  we  dislike  those  who  are  outside  our  racial 
and  social  experiences,  and  our  moral  and  re- 
ligious habits,  and  the  Jew  is  always,  every- 
where, a  foreigner.  At  any  rate,  so  the  German 
maintains. 

Strange  as  it  may  sound  in  these  days,  the 
Germans  are  not  at  heart  business  men.  There 
are  more  eyes  with  dreams  in  them  in  Germany 
than  in  all  the  world  besides.  They  work  hard, 
they  increase  their  factories,  their  commerce, 
but  their  hearts  are  not  in  it.  The  Jew  has 
amassed  an  enormous  part  of  the  wealth  of  Ger- 
many, considering  his  small  proportion  of  the 
total  population.  The  German,  because  he  is 
not  at  heart  a  trader,  is  an  easy  prey  for  him. 

These  things  trouble  us  in  America  very  little, 
and  we  smile  cynically  at  the  not  altogether  un- 
truthful portraits  of  "Potash  and  Pearlmutter," 
and  their  vermin-like  business  methods.  There 
is  an  undercurrent  of  feeling  in  America,  that  the 
virile  blood  is  still  there  which  will  stop  at  nothing 
to  throw  off  oppression,  whether  from  the  Jew 
or  from  any  one  else.  If  we  are  pinched  too  hard 
financially,  if  confiscation  by  the  government  or 


1G4     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

by  individuals  goes  too  far,  no  laws  even  will 
restrain  the  violence  which  will  break  out  for 
liberty.  So  we  are  at  peace  with  ourselves  and 
with  others,  trusting  in  that  quiet  might  which 
will  take  governing  into  its  own  hands,  at  all 
hazards,  if  the  state  of  affairs  demands  it. 

With  the  Germans  it  is  different.  No  people 
of  modern  times  has  been  so  harried  and  har- 
rowed as  these  Germans.  The  Thirty  Years' 
war  left  them  in  such  fear  and  poverty  that  even 
cannibalism  existed,  and  this  was  years  after 
Massachusetts  and  Maryland  were  settled. 
But  nothing  has  tarnished  their  idealism. 
Whether  as  followers  of  Charlemagne,  or  as 
hordes  of  dreamers  seeking  to  save  Christ's 
tomb  and  cradle  in  the  Crusades,  or  as  intoxi- 
cated barbarians  insisting  that  their  emperor 
must  be  crowned  at  Rome,  or  as  the  real  torch- 
bearers  of  the  Reformation,  or  even  now  as 
dreamers,  philosophers,  musicians,  and  only  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  by  force  of  circum- 
stances, they  are,  least  of  all  the  peoples,  mate- 
rialists. 

They  have  given  the  world  lyric  poetry, 
music,  mythology,  philosophy,  and  these  are  still 
their  souls'  darlings.  They  entered  the  modern 
world  just  as  science  began  to  marry  with  com- 
merce and  industry,  and  so  their  unworn,  fresh, 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     165 

and  youthful  intellectual  vigor  found  expression 
in  industry.  Renan  writes  that  he  owes  his 
pleasure  in  intellectual  things  to  a  long  ances- 
try of  non-thinkers,  and  he  claims  to  have  in- 
herited their  stored-up  mental  forces.  Germany 
is  not  unlike  that.  Her  recent  industrial  and 
intellectual  activity  may  be  the  release  from 
bondage,  of  the  centuries  of  stored-up  intellect- 
ual energy  from  the  "Woods  of  Germany." 

It  is  true  that  they  are  easily  governed  and 
amenable,  but  this  is  due  not  wholly  to  the  fact 
that  they  have  been  so  long  under  the  yoke  of 
rulers,  or  because  they  are  of  cow-like  disposi- 
tion, but  because  their  ideals  are  spiritual,  not 
material.  The  American  seeks  wealth,  the  Eng- 
lishman power,  the  Frenchman  notoriety,  the 
German  is  satisfied  with  peaceful  enjoyment  of 
music,  poetry,  art,  and  friendly  and  very  simple 
intercourse  with  his  fellows. 

Certainly  I  am  not  the  man  to  say  he  is 
wrong,  when  I  see  how  spiritual  things  in  my 
own  country  are  cut  out  of  the  social  body  as 
though  they  were  annoying  and  dangerous  ap- 
pendices. 

The  German  of  this  type  looks  down  upon  the 
spiritual  and  intellectual  development  of  other 
countries  as  far  inferior  to  his  own.  Such  an 
one  in  talking  to  an  Englishman  feels  that  he  is 


166     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

conversing  with  a  high-spirited,  thoroughbred 
horse;  to  a  Frenchman,  as  though  he  were  a 
cynical  monkey;  to  an  American,  as  though  he 
were  a  bright  youth  of  sixteen. 

The  German  considers  his  dealings  with  the 
intangible  things  of  life  to  be  a  higher  form,  in- 
deed the  highest  form,  of  intellectual  employ- 
ment. He  is  therefore  racially,  historically,  and 
by  temperament  jealous  or  contemptuous,  ac- 
cording to  his  station  in  life,  of  the  cosmopolitan 
exchanger  of  the  world,  the  Jew.  He  denies  to 
him  either  patriotism  or  originality,  and  looks 
upon  him  as  merely  a  distributer,  whether  in 
art,  literature,  or  commerce,  as  an  exchanger 
who  amasses  wealth  by  taking  toll  of  other  men's 
labor,  industry,  and  intellect.  It  has  not  escaped 
the  German  of  this  temper,  that  the  whirling 
gossip  and  innuendoes  that  have  lately  annoyed 
the  present  party  in  power  in  England,  have  had 
to  do  with  three  names:  Isaacs,  Samuels,  and 
Montagu,  all  Jews  and  members  of  the  govern- 
ment. 

German  politics,  German  social  life,  and  the 
German  press  cannot  be  understood  without  this 
explanation.  The  German  sees  a  danger  to  his 
hardly  won  national  life  in  the  cosmopolitanism 
of  the  Jew;  he  sees  a  danger  to  his  duty -doing, 
simple-living,  and  hard-working  governing  aris- 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     167 

tocracy  in  the  tempting  luxury  of  the  recently 
rich  Jew;  and  besides  these  objective  reasons,  he 
is  instinctively  antagonistic,  as  though  he  were 
born  of  the  clouds  of  heaven  and  the  Jew  of  the 
clods  of  earth.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
German  is  a  believer,  in  the  orthodox  sense  of 
the  word,  for  that  he  is  not.  He  loves  the 
things  of  the  mind  not  because  he  thinks  of 
them  as  of  divine  creation,  and  as  showing  an 
allegiance  to  a  divine  Creator,  but  because  they 
are  the  playthings  of  his  own  manufacture  that 
amuse  him  most.  His  superiority  to  other  na- 
tions is  that  he  claims  to  enjoy  maturer  toys. 
Not  even  France  is  so  entirely  unencumbered  by 
orthodox  restraints  in  matters  of  belief. 

So  far,  therefore,  as  the  German  press  is  Jew- 
controlled,  it  is  suspected  as  being  not  German 
politically,  domestically,  or  spiritually;  as  not 
being  representative,  in  short.  It  should  be 
added  that,  though  this  is  the  attitude  of  the 
great  majority  in  Germany,  there  is  a  small  class 
who  recognize  the  pioneer  work  that  the  Jew  has 
done.  Few  men  are  more  respected  there,  and 
few  have  more  influence  than  such  men  as 
Ballin  and  Rathenau  and  others.  For  the  very 
reason  that  the  German  is  an  idealist  the  Jew 
has  been  of  incomparable  value  to  him  in  the 
development  of  his  industrial,  commercial,  and 
financial  affairs.  Not  only  as  a  scientific  finan- 


168     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

cier  has  he  helped,  not  only  has  he  provided 
ammunition  when  German  industrial  undertak- 
ings were  weak  and  stumbling,  but  along  the 
lines  of  scientific  research,  as  chemists,  physi- 
cists, artists  —  perhaps  no  one  stands  higher 
than  the  Jew  Liebermann  as  a  painter  —  the 
Jew  has  done  yeoman  service  to  the  country  in 
return  for  the  high  wages  that  he  has  taken. 
There  are  Germans  who  recognize  this,  and 
there  are  in  the  Jewish  world  not  a  few  men  to 
whom  the  doors  of  enlightened  society  are  al- 
ways open. 

Whatever  one  may  feel  of  instinctive  dislike, 
the  open-minded  observers  of  the  historical  prog- 
ress of  Germany,  all  recognize  that  Germany 
would  not  be  in  the  foremost  place  she  now  occu- 
pies in  the  competitive  markets  of  the  world,  if 
she  had  not  had  the  patriotic,  intelligent,  and 
skilful  backing  of  her  better-class  Jewish  citizens. 

Printing  was  born  in  Germany,  and  the  town 
of  Augsburg  had  a  newspaper  as  early  as  1505, 
while  Berlin  had  a  newspaper  in  1617  and  Ham- 
burg in  1628.  Every  foreigner  who  knows  Ger- 
many at  all,  knows  the  names  of  the  Kolnische 
Zeitung,  the  Lokal  Anzeiger  and  Der  Tag,  Ham- 
burger Nachrichten,  Berliner  Tageblatt,  Frank- 
furter Zeitung,  and  the  Norddeutsche  Allgemeine 
Zeitung,  this  last  the  official  organ  of  the  foreign 
office.  The  Neue  Preussische  Zeitung,  better 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     169 

known  by  its  briefer  title  of  Kreuz  Zeitung,  is  a 
stanch  conservative  organ,  and  for  years  has  pub- 
lished the  scholarly  comments  once  a  week  of  Pro- 
fessor Schiemann,  who  is  a  political  historian  of 
distinction,  and  a  trusted  friend  of  the  Emperor. 
The  Deutsche  Tageszeitung  is  the  organ  of  the 
Agrarian  League.  The  Reichsbote  is  a  conserva- 
tive journal  and  the  organ  of  the  orthodox  party 
in  the  state  church.  Vorwarts  is  the  organ  of 
the  socialists  and,  whatever  one  may  think  of  its 
politics,  one  of  the  best-edited,  as  it  is  one  of  the 
best- written,  newspapers  in  Germany.  The  Zu- 
kunft, a  weekly  publication,  is  the  personal  organ 
of  Harden,  is  Harden,  in  fact.  The  Zukunft  in 
normal  years  sells  some  22,000  copies  at  20 
marks,  giving  an  income  of  440,000  marks;  this 
with  the  advertisements  gives  an  income  of  say 
500,000  marks.  The  expenses  are  about  350,000 
marks,  leaving  a  net  income  to  this  daring  and 
accomplished  journalist  of  150,000  marks  a  year. 
In  Germany  such  an  income  is  great  wealth. 
The  Zukunft  and  its  success  is  a  commentary  of 
value  upon  the  appreciation  of,  as  well  as  the 
rarity  of,  independent  journalism  in  Germany. 

The  Vossische  Zeitung,  or  ''Aunty  Voss"  as  it 
is  nicknamed,  is  a  solid,  bourgeois  sheet  and  mod- 
erately radical  in  tone.  It  is  proper,  wipes  its 
feet  before  entering  the  house,  and  may  be  safely 
left  in  the  servants'  hall  or  in  the  school-room. 


170    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Die  Post  represents  the  conservative  party  polit- 
ically, is  welcome  in  rich  industrial  circles,  and 
is  rather  liberal  in  religious  matters,  though 
hostile  to  the  government  in  matters  of  foreign 
politics,  and  of  less  influence  at  home  than  the 
frequent  quotations  from  it  in  the  British  press 
would  lead  one  to  suppose.  The  two  official  or- 
gans of  the  Catholics  are  the  Germania  and  the 
Kolnische  Volks  Zeitung,  of  Cologne,  whose  edi- 
tor is  the  well-known  Julius  Bachern.  TheJLokcd 
Anzeiger  and  the  Tageblatt  of  Berlin  attempt, 
with  no  small  degree  of  success,  American  meth- 
ods, and  give  out  several  editions  a  day  with 
particular  reference  to  the  latest  news. 

Leipsic,  Hamburg,  Munich,  Cologne,  Strass- 
burg,  Dresden,  Konigsberg,  Breslau,  with  its 
Schlessische  Zeitung,  and  the  Rhine  provinces 
and  the  steel  and  iron  industries  represented 
by  the  Rheinisch-Westfdlische  Zeitung,  and  other 
cities  and  towns  have  local  newspapers.  A  good 
example  of  such  little-known  provincial  news- 
papers is  the  Augsburger  Abendzeitung,  with  its 
first-rate  reports  of  the  parliamentary  proceed- 
ings in  Bavaria  and  its  well-edited  columns. 
The  circulation  of  these  journals  is,  from  our 
point  of  view,  small.  The  Berliner  Tageblatt  in  a 
/  recent  issue  declares  its  paid  circulation  to  have 
been  73,000  in  1901;  106,000  in  1905;  190,000  in 
1910;  and  208,000  in  1911. 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     171 

The  custom  in  Germany  of  eating  in  restau- 
rants, of  taking  coffee  in  the  cafes,  of  writing 
one's  letters  and  reading  the  newspapers  there, 
no  doubt  has  much  to  do  with  the  small  subscrip- 
tion lists  of  German  journals  of  all  kinds,  whether 
daily,  weekly,  or  monthly.  The  German  econ- 
omizes even  in  these  small  matters.  A  German 
family,  or  small  cafe  or  restaurant,  may,  for  a 
small  sum,  have  half  a  dozen  or  more  weekly 
and  monthly  journals  left,  and  changed  each 
week;  thus  they  are  circulated  in  a  dozen  places 
at  the  expense  of  only  one  copy.  Where  a  family 
of  similar  standing  in  America  takes  in  regularly 
two  morning  papers  and  an  evening  paper,  sev- 
eral weekly  and  monthly,  and  perhaps  one  or  two 
foreign  journals,  the  German  family  may  take 
one  morning  paper.  The  custom  of  having  half 
a  dozen  newspapers  served  with  the  morning 
meal,  as  is  done  in  the  larger  houses  in  America 
and  in  England,  is  practically  unknown.  Econ- 
omy is  one  reason,  indifference  is  another,  pro- 
vincial and  circumscribed  interests  are  others. 

The  German  has  not  our  keen  appetite  for 
what  we  call  news,  which  is  often  merely  sur- 
mises in. bigger  type.  Only  the  very  small  num- 
ber who  have  travelled  and  made  interests  and 
friends  for  themselves  out  of  their  own  country, 
have  any  feeling  of  curiosity  even,  about  the 
political  and  social  tides  and  currents  elsewhere. 


172     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

An  astounding  number  of  Germans  know  Soph- 
ocles, ^Esehylus,  and  Shakespeare  better  than  we 
do,  but  they  know  nothing,  and  care  nothing,  for 
the  sizzling,  crackling  stream  of  purposeless  inci- 
dent, and  sterile  comment,  that  pours  in  upon  the 
readers  of  American  newspapers,  and  which  has 
had  its  part  in  making  us  the  largest  consumers 
of  nerve-quieting  drugs  in  the  world.  All  too 
many  of  the  pens  that  supply  our  press  are  with- 
out education,  without  experience,  without  re- 
sponsibility or  restraint.  What  Mommsen  writes 
of  Cicero  applies  to  them:  "Cicero  was  a  jour- 
nalist in  the  worst  sense  of  the  term,  over-rich 
in  words  as  he  himself  confesses,  and  beyond 
all  imagination  poor  in  thought." 

No  one  of  these  journals  pretends  to  such 
power  or  such  influence  as  certain  great  dailies 
in  America  and  in  England.  They  have  not 
the  means  at  their  command  to  buy  much  cable 
or  telegraphic  news,  and  lacking  a  press  tariff 
for  telegrams,  they  are  the  more  hampered. 
The  German  temperament,  and  the  civil-service 
and  political  close-corporation  methods,  make  it 
difficult  for  the  journalist  to  go  far,  either  so- 
cially or  politically.  The  German  has  been 
trained  in  a  severe  school  to  seek  knowledge,  not 
to  look  for  news,  and  he  does  not  make  the  same 
demands,  therefore,  upon  his  newspaper. 

German  relations  with  the  outside  world  are 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     173 

of  an  industrial  and  commercial  kind,  and  until 
very  lately  the  German  has  not  been  a  traveller, 
and  is  not  now  an  explorer,  and  their  colonies  are 
unimportant;  consequently  there  is  no  very  keen 
interest  on  the  part  of  the  bulk  of  the  people  in 
foreign  affairs.  Even  Sir  Edward  Grey's  an- 
swering speech  on  the  Morocco  question  did  not 
appear  in  full  in  Berlin  until  the  following  day, 
though  Germany  had  roused  itself  to  an  unusual 
pitch  of  excitement  and  expectancy. 

As  the  Germans  are  not  yet  political  animals, 
so  their  newspapers  reflect  an  artificial  political 
enthusiasm.  Society,  too,  is  as  little  organized 
as  politics.  There  are  no  great  figures  in  their 
social  world.  A  Beau  Brummel,  a  d'Orsay,  a 
Lady  Palmerston,  a  Lady  Londonderry,  a  Duke 
of  Devonshire,  a  Gladstone,  a  Disraeli,  a  Rose- 
bery,  would  be  impossible  in  Germany,  espe- 
cially if  they  were  in  opposition  to  the  party  in 
power.  When  a  chancellor  or  other  minister  is 
dismissed  by  the  Kaiser,  he  simply  disappears. 
He  does  not  add  to  the  weight  of  the  opposition, 
but  ceases  to  exist  politically.  This  has  two  bad 
results:  it  does  not  strengthen  the  criticism  of 
the  administration,  and  it  makes  the  office-holder 
very  loath  to  leave  office,  and  to  surrender  his 
power.  An  ex-cabinet  officer  in  America  or  in 
England  remains  a  valuable  critic,  but  an  ex- 


174     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

chancellor  in  Germany  becomes  a  social  recluse, 
a  political  Trappist.  Even  the  leading  political 
figures  are  after  all  merely  shadowy  servants  of 
the  Emperor.  They  represent  neither  themselves 
nor  the  people,  and  such  subserviency  kills  inde- 
pendence and  leaves  us  with  mediocrities  ges- 
ticulating in  the  dark,  and  making  phrases  in  a 
vacuum. 

There  are,  it  is  true,  charming  hostesses  in 
Berlin,  and  ladies  who  gather  in  their  drawing- 
rooms  all  that  is  most  interesting  in  the  intel- 
lectual and  political  life  of  the  day;  but  they  are 
almost  without  exception  obedient  to  the  tra- 
ditional officialdom,  leaning  upon  a  favor  that 
is  at  times  erratic,  and  without  the  daring  of 
independence  which  is  the  salt  of  all  real  per- 
sonality. 

There  are,  too,  country-houses.  One  castle  in 
Bavaria,  how  well  I  remember  it,  and  the  accom- 
plished charm  of  its  owner,  who  had  made  its 
grandeur  cosey,  a  feat,  indeed!  But  all  this  is 
detached  from  the  real  life  of  the  nation,  which 
is  forever  taking  its  cue  from  the  court,  leaving 
any  independent  or  imposing  social  and  political 
life  benumbed  and  without  vitality.  There  is  no 
free  and  stalwart  opposition,  no  centres  of  power; 
and  much  as  one  tires  of  the  incessant  and  fever- 
ish strife  political  and  social  at  home,  one  returns 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     175 

to  it  taking  a  long  breath  of  the  free  air  after 
this  hot-house  atmosphere,  where  the  ther- 
mometer is  regulated  by  the  wishes  of  an  auto- 
crat. 

The  press  necessarily  reflects  these  conditions. 
The  Social  Democrats,  divided  into  many  small 
parties,  and  the  Agrarians  and  Ultramontanes, 
divided  as  well,  give  the  press  no  single  point  of 
leverage.  These  political  parties  wrangle  among 
themselves  over  the  dish  of  votes,  but  what  is 
put  into  the  dish  comes  from  a  master  over  wrhom 
they  have  no  control.  If  they  upset  the  dish 
they  are  turned  out  as  they  were  in  1878,  1887, 
1893,  and  1907,  and  when  they  return  they  are 
better  behaved. 

The  parties  themselves  are  not  real,  since  thou- 
sands of  voters  lean  to  the  left  merely  to  express 
their  discontent;  but  they  would  desert  the  So- 
cial Democrats  at  once  did  they  think  there  was 
a  chance  of  real  governing  power  for  them.  A 
small  industrial  was  warned  of  the  awful  things 
that  would  happen  did  the  Socialists  come  into 
power.  "Ah,"  he  replied,  "but  the  government 
would  not  permit  that ! "  What  has  the  press  to 
chronicle  with  insistence  and  with  dignity  of  such 
flabby  political  and  social  conditions? 

The  press  may  be,  and  often  is,  annoying,  as 
mosquitoes  are  annoying,  but  its  campaigns  are 
dangerous  to  nobody.  As  I  write,  it  is  hard  to 


176    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

believe  that  within  a  few  days  the  members  of  a 
new  Reichstag  are  to  be  elected.  There  are  po- 
litical meetings,  it  is  true,  there  are  articles  and 
editorials  in  the  newspapers,  there  is  some  lan- 
guid discussion  at  dinner-tables  and  in  society, 
but  there  is  a  sense  of  unreality  about  it  all,  as 
though  men  were  thinking :  Nothing  of  grave  im- 
portance can  happen  in  any  case!  We  shall 
have  something  to  say  farther  on  of  political 
Germany;  here  it  suffices  to  say  that  the  press 
of  Germany  betrays  in  its  political  writing  that 
it  is  dealing  with  shadows,  not  with  realities. 
;'They  have  been  at  a  great  feast  of  language, 
and  stolen  the  scraps,"  that's  all. 

The  snarling  Panther  that  was  sent  to  Agadir, 
teeth  and  claws  showing,  came  back  looking  like 
an  adventurous  tomcat  that  wished  only  to  hide 
itself  meekly  in  its  accustomed  haunts;  and  its 
unobtrusive  bearing  seemed  to  say,  the  less  said 
about  the  matter  the  better.  What  a  storm  of 
obloquy  would  have  burst  upon  such  inept  di- 
plomacy in  America,  or  in  England,  or  even  in 
France.  Not  so  here.  Everybody  was  sore  and 
sorry,  but  the  newspapers  and  the  journalists 
could  raise  no  protest  that  counted.  It  is  all 
explained  by  the  fact  that  the  people  do  not 
govern,  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  whip  or 
the  reins,  nor  have  they  any  constitutional  way 
of  changing  coachmen,  or  of  getting  possession 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     177 

of  whip  and  reins ;  and  hooting  at  the  driver,  and 
jeering  at  the  tangled  whip-lash  and  awkwardly 
held  reins,  is  poor-spirited  business.  Only  one 
political  writer,  Harden,  does  it  with  any  effect, 
and  his  pen  is  said  to  have  upset  the  Caprivi 
government. 

As  one  reads  the  newspapers  day  by  day,  and 
the  weekly  and  monthly  journals,  it  becomes  ap- 
parent that  the  German  imagines  he  has  done 
something  when  he  has  had  an  idea;  just  as  the 
Frenchman  imagines  he  has  done  something 
when  he  has  made  an  epigram.  We  are  less 
given  either  to  thinking  or  phrasing,  and  far  less 
gifted  in  these  directions  than  either  Germans  or 
Frenchmen,  and  perhaps  that  is  the  reason  we 
have  actually  done  so  much  more  politically. 
We  do  things  for  lack  of  something  better  to  do, 
while  our  neighbors  find  real  pleasure  in  their 
dreams,  and  take  great  pride  in  their  epigrams. 

As  all  great  writing,  from  that  of  Xenophon 
and  Caesar  till  now,  is  born  of  action  or  the  love 
of  it,  or  as  a  spiritual  incitement  to  action,  so  a 
people  with  little  opportunity  for  political  action, 
and  no  centres  of  social  life  with  a  real  sway  or 
sovereignty,  cannot  create  or  offer  substance  for 
the  making  of  a  powerful  and  independent  press. 

There  is  no  New  York,  no  Paris,  no  London, 
no  Vienna  even,  in  Germany.  Berlin  is  the  capi- 


178    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

tal,  but  it  is  not  a  capital  by  political  or  social 
evolution,  but  by  force  of  circumstances.  Ger- 
many has  many  centres  which  are  not  only  not 
interested  in  Berlin,  but  even  antagonistic. 
Munich,  Hamburg,  Bremen,  Leipsic,  Frankfort, 
Dresden,  Breslau,  and  besides  these,  twenty-six 
separate  states  with  their  capitals,  their  rulers, 
courts,  and  parliaments,  go  to  make  up  Ger- 
many, and  perhaps  you  are  least  of  all  in  Ger- 
many when  you  are  in  Berlin.  It  is  true  that 
we  have  many  States,  many  capitals,  and  many 
governors  in  America,  but  they  have  all  grown 
from  one,  and  not,  as  in  Germany,  been  beaten 
into  one,  and  held  together  more  from  a  sense 
of  danger  from  the  outside  than  from  any  inter- 
est, sympathy,  and  liking  for  one  another. 

With  us  each  State,  too,  has  a  powerful  rep- 
resentation both  in  the  Senate  and  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  which  keeps  the  interest 
alive,  while  in  Germany  Prussia  is  overwhelm- 
ingly preponderant.  In  the  upper  house,  or 
Bundesrat,  Prussia  has  17  representatives;  next 
comes  Bavaria  with  6;  and  the  other  states  with 
4  or  less,  out  of  a  total  of  58  members.  In  the 
Reichstag,  out  of  a  total  of  397  representatives, 
Prussia  has  236. 

Political  society  is  not  all  centred  in  Berlin,  as 
it  is  in  London,  Paris,  or  Washington,  nor  is  social 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     179 

life  there  representative  of  all  Germany.  Ber- 
lin's stamp  of  approval  is  not  necessary  to  play, 
or  opera,  or  book,  or  picture,  or  statue,  or  per- 
sonality. Indeed,  Berlin  often  takes  a  lead  in 
such  matters  from  other  cities  in  Germany  where 
the  artistic  life  and  history  are  more  fully  de- 
veloped, as,  for  instance,  in  other  days,  Wei- 
mar, and  now  Munich,  Dresden,  and,  in  literary 
matters,  Leipsic.  A  recent  example  of  this, 
though  of  small  consequence  in  itself,  is  the  case 
of  the  opera,  the  "Rosen  Kavalier,"  which  was 
given  repeatedly  in  Dresden  and  Leipsic,  whither 
many  Berlin  people  went  to  hear  it,  before  the 
authorities  in  Berlin  could  be  persuaded  to  pro- 
duce it. 

The  nobility,  the  society  heavy  artillery,  come 
to  Berlin  only  for  three  or  four  weeks,  from  the 
middle  of  January  to  the  middle  of  February,  to 
pay  their  respects  to  their  sovereign  at  the  vari- 
ous court  functions  given  during  that  time. 
They  live  in  the  country  and  only  visit  in  Berlin. 
It  is  complained,  that  the  double  taxation  inci- 
dent to  the  up-keep  of  an  establishment  both  in 
town  and  in  the  country,  makes  it  impossible  for 
them  to  be  much  in  Berlin.  They  stay  in  hotels 
and  in  apartments,  and  are  mere  passing  visitors 
in  their  own  capital.  They  have,  therefore, 
practically  no  influence  upon  social  life,  and  Ber- 


180     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

lin  is  merely  the  centre  of  the  industrial,  military, 
official,  and  political  society  of  Prussia.  It  is  the 
clearing-house  of  Germany,  but  by  no  means  the 
literary,  artistic,  social,  or  even  the  political  capi- 
tal of  Germany,  as  London  is  the  English,  or 
Paris  the  French,  or  as  Washington  is  fast  grow- 
ing to  be  the  American,  capital. 

There  is  no  training-ground  for  an  accom- 
plished or  man-of-the-world  journalist,  and  the 
views  and  opinions  of  a  journalist  who  is  more 
or  less  of  a  social  pariah,  and  he  still  is  that  with 
less  than  half  a  dozen  exceptions,  and  of  a  man 
who  begs  for  crumbs  from  the  press  officials  at 
the  foreign  or  other  government  offices,  are 
neither  written  with  the  grip  of  the  independent 
and  dignified  chronicler,  nor  received  with  confi- 
dence and  respect  by  the  reader. 

It  may  be  a  reaction  from  this  negligence  with 
which  they  are  treated  that  produces  a  quality, 
both  in  the  writing  and  in  the  illustrations  of  the 
German  newspapers,  which  is  unknown  in  Amer- 
ica. Many  of  the  illustrated  papers  indulge  in 
pictorial  flings  which  may  be  compared  only  to 
the  scribbling  and  coarse  drawings,  in  out-of- 
the-way  places,  of  dirty-minded  boys.  With  the 
exception  of  the  well-known  Fliegende  Blatter, 
Kladderadatsch,  and  one  or  two  less  representa- 
tive, there  is  nothing  to  compare  with  the  artistic 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     181 

excellence  and  restrained  good  taste  of  Life  or 
Punch,  for  example. 

There  is  one  illustrated  paper  published  in 
Munich,  Simplicissimus,  which  deserves  more 
than  negligent  and  passing  comment.  It  has 
two  artists  of  whom  I  know  nothing  except  what 
I  have  learned  from  their  work,  Th.  Th.  Heine 
and  Gulbransson.  These  men  are  Aristophanic 
in  their  ability  as  draughtsmen  and  as  censors, 
in  striking  at  the  weaknesses,  political,  military, 
and  official,  of  their  countrymen.  Their  work  is 
something  quite  new  in  Germany,  and  worthy  of 
comparison  with  the  best  in  any  country.  It  is 
not  elegant,  it  is  Rabelaisian;  and  though  I  have 
nothing  to  retract  in  regard  to  coarseness,  and 
no  wish  to  commend  the  attitude  taken  toward 
German  political  and  social  life,  in  fairness  one  is 
bound  to  call  attention  to  the  pictorial  work  in 
this  particular  paper  as  of  a  very  high  order,  and 
to  recognize  its  power.  If  Heine  could  have 
turned  his  wit  into  the  drawings  of  Hogarth,  we 
should  have  had  something  not  unlike  Simplicis- 
simus, and  any  German  annoyed  at  the  criti- 
cisms of  his  national  life  from  the  pen  of  a  for- 
eigner, may  well  turn  to  his  own  Simplicissimus, 
and  be  humbly  grateful  that  no  foreign  pen- 
point  can  possibly  pierce  more  deeply,  than  this 
domestic  pencil,  at  work  in  his  own  country. 


182     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  danger  for  the  critic  and  the  wit,  which 
few  avoid,  is  that  with  incomparable  advantages 
over  his  opponent  he  will  not  play  fair.  In  spite 
of  the  awful  reputation  of  our  so-called  "yellow 
press,"  which  is  often  boisterously  impudent,  and 
sometimes  inclined  to  indulge  in  comments  and 
revelations  of  the  private  affairs  of  individuals 
which  can  only  be  dubbed  coarse  and  cowardly, 
there  is  seldom  a  descent  to  the  indescribably  in- 
decent caricatures  which  one  finds  every  week  in 
the  illustrated  papers  in  Germany.  As  we  have 
noted  elsewhere,  just  as  the  citizens  of  Berlin,  as 
one  sees  them  in  the  streets  and  in  public  places, 
give  one  the  impression  that  they  are  not  house- 
trained, so  many  of  the  pens  and  pencils  which 
serve  the  German  press,  leave  one  with  the  feeling 
that  their  possessors  would  not  know  how  to 
behave  in  a  cultivated  and  well-regulated  house- 
hold. 

Every  gentleman  in  Germany  must  have  been 
ashamed  of  the  writing  in  the  German  press  after 
the  sinking  of  the  Titanic.  There  was  a  blaze  of 
brutal  pharisaism  that  put  a  bar-sinister  across 
any  claim  to  gentlemanliness  on  the  part  of  the 
majority.  When  every  brave  man  in  the  world 
was  lamenting  the  death  of  Scott,  the  English 
Arctic  explorer,  one  German  paper  intimated 
that  he  had  committed  suicide  to  avoid  the 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     183 

bankruptcy  forced  upon  him  by  England's  lack 
of  generosity  toward  his  expedition.  It  is  al- 
most unbelievable  that  such  a  cur  should  have 
escaped  unthrashed,  even  among  the  German 
journalists.  These  two  examples  of  lack  of  fine 
feeling  mark  them  for  what  they  are.  Among 
gentlemen  no  comment  is  necessary.  The  mark 
of  breeding  is  more  often  discovered  in  what 
one  does  not  say,  does  not  write,  does  not  do, 
than  in  positive  action.  There  was  much,  at 
that  time,  when  fifteen  hundred  people  had  been 
buried  in  icy  water,  and  scores  of  American  and 
English  gentlemen  had  gone  down  to  death,  just 
in  answer  to:  "Ladies  first,  gentlemen!"  that 
should  have  been  left  unsaid  and  unwritten. 
The  quality  of  the  German  journalist,  with  half 
a  dozen  exceptions,  was  betrayed  to  the  full 
in  those  few  days,  and  many  a  German  cheek 
mantled  with  shame. 

However,  a  man  may  eat  with  his  knife  and 
still  be  an  authority  on  bridge-building;  he  may 
tuck  his  napkin  under  his  chin  preparatory  to, 
and  as  an  armor  against,  the  well-known  vagaries 
of  liquids,  before  he  takes  his  soup  or  his  soft- 
boiled  eggs,  and  still  be  an  authority  on  soap- 
making;  he  may  wear  a  knitted  waistcoat  with  a 
frock-coat  to  luncheon,  and  be  deeply  versed  in 
Russian  history.  He  may  have  no  inkling  of 


184     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  traditions  of  fair  play,  or  of  the  reticences  of 
courtesy,  no  shred  of  knightliness,  and  yet  be  a 
scholar  in  his  way.  Indeed,  in  none  of  the  other 
cultured  countries  does  one  find  so  many  men  of 
trained  minds,  but  with  such  untrained  manners 
and  morals.  In  their  lack  of  sensation-mongering, 
in  their  indifference  to  social  gossip,  in  their 
trustworthy  and  learned  comments  upon  things 
scientific,  musical,  theatrical,  literary,  and  his- 
torical, they  are  as  men  to  school-boys  com- 
pared to  the  American  press.  They  have  the 
utter  contempt  for  mere  smartness  that  only 
comes  with  severe  educational  training.  They 
have  the  scholar's  impatience  with  trivialities. 
They  skate,  not  to  cut  their  names  on  the  ice, 
but  to  get  somewhere,  and  the  whole  industrial 
and  scientific  world  knows  how  quickly  they  have 
arrived. 

Our  newspapers  make  a  business  of  training 
their  readers  in  that  worst  of  all  habits,  mental 
dissipation.  The  German  press  is  not  thus 
guilty.  Despite  all  I  have  written,  I  am  quite 
sure  that  if  I  were  banished  from  the  active  world 
and  could  see  only  half  a  dozen  journals  on  my 
lonely  island,  one  of  them  would  be  a  German 
newspaper.  It  may  be  that  I  have  a  perverted 
literary  taste,  for  I  can  get  more  humor,  more 
keen  enjoyment,  out  of  a  census  report  or  an  ety- 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     185 

mological  dictionary  than  from  a  novel.  My 
favorite  literary  dissipation  is  to  read  the  works 
of  that  distinguished  statistician  at  Washington, 
Mr.  O.  P.  Austin,  the  poet-laureate  of  industrial 
America,  or  the  toilsome  and  exciting  verbal 
journeys  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Skeat.  The  classic  hu- 
morists do  not  compare  with  them,  in  my  humble 
opinion,  as  sources  of  fantastic  surprises.  This, 
perhaps,  accounts  for  my  sincere  admiration  for 
that  quality  of  scholarship,  learning,  and  accu- 
racy in  the  German  press.  Nor  does  the  pos- 
session of  these  qualities  in  the  least  controvert 
the  impression  given  by  the  German  press  of 
political  powerlessness,  of  social  ignorance  and 
incompetence,  and  of  boorish  ignorance  of  the 
laws  of  common  decency  in  international  com- 
ment and  controversy.  A  great  scholar  may  be 
a  booby  in  a  drawing-room,  and  a  lamentable 
failure  as  an  adviser  in  matters  political  and  so- 
cial. "As  a  bird  that  wandereth  from  her  nest, 
so  is  a  man  that  wandereth  from  his  place." 
Germany  has  put  some  astonishing  failures  to 
her  credit  through  her  belief  that  learning  can 
take  the  place  of  common-sense,  and  scholarship 
do  the  tasks  of  that  intelligent  and  experienced 
observation  to  which  the  abused  word,  worldli- 
ness,  is  given.  Perhaps  it  is  as  well  that  the 
German  press  declines  to  keep  a  social  diary; 


186     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

well,  too,  that  it  has  no  candidates  for  the  office 
of  society  Haruspex,  whose  ghoulish  business  it 
is  to  find  omens  and  prophecies  in  the  entrails 
of  his  victims.  In  that  respect,  at  any  rate, 
both  society  and  the  press  in  Germany  are  as  is 
the  salon  to  the  scullery,  compared  with  ours. 
As  for  that  little  knot  of  illustrated  weekly 
papers  in  England,  with  their  nauseating  letter- 
press for  snobs  inside,  and  their  advertisements 
of  patent  complexion  remedies  and  corsets  out- 
side, there  is  nothing  like  them  in  Germany  or 
anywhere  else,  so  far  as  I  know.  You  may  ad- 
vertise your  shooting-party,  your  dance,  or  your 
dinner-party,  and  thus  keep  yourself  before  the 
world  as  though  you  were  a  whiskey,  a  soap,  or 
a  superfluous-hair-destroy er,  if  you  please,  and, 
alas,  many  there  are  who  do  so.  At  least  Ger- 
many knows  nothing  of  this  weekly  auction  of 
privacy,  this  nauseating  snobbery  which  is  a 
fungus-growth  seen  at  its  strongest  in  British 
soil. 

I  am  bound,  both  by  tradition  and  experience 
as  an  American,  to  discover  the  reason  for  such 
conditions  in  the  lack  of  fluidity  in  social  and 
political  life  in  Germany.  The  industrials,  the 
military,  the  nobility,  the  civil  servants,  and  to 
some  extent  the  Jews,  are  all  in  separate  social 
compartments;  and  the  political  parties  as  well 


keep  much  to  themselves  and  without  the  per- 
sonal give  and  take  outside  of  their  purely  official 
life  which  obtains  in  America  and  in  England. 

It  is  an  impossible  suggestion,  I  know,  but  if 
the  upper  and  lower  houses  of  the  empire,  or  of 
Prussia,  could  meet  in  a  match  at  base-ball,  or 
golf,  or  cricket;  if  the  army  could  play  the  civil 
service;  if  the  newspaper  correspondents  could 
play  the  under-secretaries ;  if  they  could  all  be 
induced  occasionally,  to  throw  off  their  mental 
and  moral  uniforms,  and  to  meet  merely  as  men, 
a  current  of  fresh  air  would  blow  through  Ger- 
many, that  she  would  never  after  permit  to  be 
shut  out. 

Personal  dignity  is  refreshed,  not  lost,  by  a 
romp.  Who  has  not  seen  distinguished  Ameri- 
cans and  distinguished  Englishmen,  in  their  own 
or  in  their  friends'  houses,  or  at  one  or  another 
of  our  innumerable  games,  behaving  like  boys 
out  of  school,  crawling  about  beneath  improvised 
skins  and  growling  and  roaring  in  charades;  in- 
dulging in  flying  chaff  of  one  another;  in  the 
skirts  of  their  wives  and  sisters  playing  cricket, 
or  base-ball,  or  tennis  with  the  one  hand  only; 
caricaturing  good-humoredly  some  of  their  own 
official  business,  or  arranging  a  match  of  some 
kind  where  their  own  servants  join  in  to  make 
up  a  side;  or,  and  well  I  remember  it,  half  a 


188     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

dozen  youths  of  about  fifty  playing  cricket  with 
one  stump  and  a  broom-handle  for  an  hour  one 
hot  afternoon,  amid  tumbles  and  shouts  of  laugh- 
ter, and  a  shower  of  impromptu  nicknames,  and 
one  or  two  of  them  bore  names  known  all  over 
the  English-speaking  world.  Nobody  loses  any 
dignity,  any  importance;  but  there  is  an  uncon- 
querable stiffness  in  Germany  that  makes  me 
laugh  almost  as  I  make  this  suggestion.  We 
have  only  a  certain  reserve  of  serious  work  in  us. 
To  attempt  to  be  serious  all  the  time  is  never 
to  be  at  rest.  This  worried  busyness,  which  is  a 
characteristic  of  the  more  mediocre  of  my  own 
countrymen  also,  is  really  a  symptom  of  deficient 
vitality.  Things  are  in  the  saddle  and  you  are 
the  mule  and  not  the  man,  if  you  are  such  an  one. 
The  stiffness  and  self-consciousness  of  the  Ger- 
mans is  really  a  sign  of  their  lack  of  confidence 
in  themselves.  Youth  is  always  more  serious 
than  middle  age,  for  the  same  reason.  A  man 
who  is  at  home  in  the  world  laughs  and  is  gay; 
he  who  is  shy  and  doubtful  scowls.  It  is  the 
God-fearing  who  are  not  afraid,  it  is  the  man- 
fearing  who  are  awkward  and  uncomfortable. 

The  first  thing  to  be  afraid  of  is  oneself,  but 
after  oneself  is  conquered  why  be  afraid  to  let 
him  loose! 

It  would  be  quite  untrue  to  give  the  impres- 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     189 

sion  that  there  is  no  fun,  no  larking,  no  chaff,  in 
Germany,  although  I  am  bound  to  say  that  there 
is  little  of  this  last.  I  can  bear  witness  to  a 
healthy  love  of  fun,  and  to  an  exuberant  exploi- 
tation of  youthful  vitality  in  many  directions 
among  the  students  and  younger  officers,  for 
example.  Better  companions  for  a  romp  exist 
nowhere.  Having  been  blessed  with  an  undue 
surplus  of  vitality,  which  for  many  years  kept 
me  fully  occupied  in  directing  its  expenditure, 
alas,  not  always  with  success,  I  can  only  add  that 
I  found  as  many  youthful  companions  in  a  simi- 
lar predicament  in  Germany,  as  any\vhere  else. 
But  with  the  Englishman  and  the  Ameri- 
can, both  temperament  and  environment  permit 
youthfulness  to  last  longer.  The  German  must 
soon  get  into  the  mill  and  grind  and  be  ground, 
and  he  is  by  temperament  more  easily  caught 
and  put  into  the  uniform  of  a  constantly  correct 
behavior.  As  for  us,  we  are  all  boys  still  at 
thirty,  many  of  us  at  fifty,  and  some  of  us  die 
ere  the  school-boy  exuberance  has  all  been 
squeezed  or  dried  out  of  us.  Not  so  in  Germany. 
One  sees  more  men  in  Germany  who  give  the 
impression  that  they  could  not  by  any  possi- 
bility ever  have  been  boys  than  with  us.  They 
begin  to  look  cramped  at  thirty,  and  they  are 
stiff  at  fifty,  as  though  they  had  been  fed  on  a 


190     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

diet  of  circumspection,  caution,  and  obedience. 
They  are  drilled  early  and  they  soon  become 
amenable,  and  then  even  indulgent,  toward  the 
drill-master. 

This  German  people  have  not  developed  into  a 
nation,  they  have  been  squeezed  into  the  mould 
of  a  nation.  The  nation  is  not  for  the  people, 
the  people  are  for  the  nation.  "By  the  word 
Constitution,"  writes  Lord  Bolingbroke,  "we 
mean,  whenever  we  speak  with  propriety  and 
exactness,  the  assemblage  of  laws,  institutions, 
and  customs  derived  from  certain  fixed  princi- 
ples of  reason,  directed  to  certain  fixed  objects 
of  public  good,  that  compose  the  general  sys- 
tem by  which  the  community  hath  agreed  to  be 
governed."  The  Germans  have  no  such  con- 
stitution, for  the  community  was  scarcely  con- 
sulted, much  less  hath  it  agreed  to  the  general 
system  by  which  it  is  governed. 

Of  course,  in  every  nation  its  affairs  are,  and 
must  be,  conducted  by  officials.  That  is  as  true 
of  America  as  of  Germany.  The  fundamental 
difference  is  that  with  us  these  official  persons 
are  executive  officers  only,  the  real  captain  is  the 
people;  while  in  Germany  these  official  persons 
are  the  real  governors  of  the  people,  subject  to 
the  commands  of  one  who  repeatedly  and  pub- 
licly asserts  that  his  commission  is  from  God  and 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     191 

not  from  the  people.  This  puts  whole  classes  of 
the  community  permanently  into  uniform,  and 
the  wearers  of  these  uniforms  are  almost  afraid 
to  laugh,  and  would  consider  it  sacrilege  to  romp. 
Caution  is  a  very  puny  form  of  morality. 
' 'He  that  observeth  the  wind  shall  not  sow;  and 
he  that  regardeth  the  clouds  shall  not  reap." 
It  is  as  true  politically  as  of  other  spheres  of  life 
that  "he  or  she  who  lets  the  world  or  his  own 
portion  of  it  choose  his  plan  of  life  for  him  has 
no  need  of  any  other  faculty  than  the  ape-like 
one  of  imitation."  Thus  writes  John  Stuart 
Mill,  and  what  else  can  be  said  of  the  political 
activities  of  the  Germans?  What  journalist  or 
what  patriot  indeed  can  take  seriously  a  majority 
that  has  no  power?  What  people  can  call  itself 
free  to  whom  its  rulers  are  not  responsible? 
The  Social  Democrats,  at  the  moment  of  writ- 
ing, have  won  one  hundred  and  ten  seats  in  the 
Reichstag,  but  the  army  and  navy  estimates  are 
beyond  their  reach,  the  taxes  are  fixtures,  a  con- 
stitution is  a  dream,  and  if  they  are  cantankerous 
or  truculent  the  Reichstag  will  be  dismissed  by  a 
wave  of  the  hand.  Say  what  one  will,  they  are  a 
mammillary  people  politically,  and  the  strongest 
party  in  the  Reichstag  is  merely  an  energetic 
political  mangonel.  Their  leaders  moult  opin- 
ions, they  do  not  mould  them,  and  could  not 
translate  them  into  action  if  they  did. 


192     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Not  since  1874  has  there  been  a  Reichstag  so 
strongly  radical,  but  nothing  will  come  of  it. 
The  Reichskanzler,  Doctor  von  Bethmann-Holl- 
weg,  did  not  hesitate  to  take  an  early  opportu- 
nity, after  the  opening  of  the  new  Reichstag,  to 
state  boldly  that  the  issue  was  Authority  versus 
Democratization,  and  that  he  had  no  fear  of  the 
result.  It  is  customary  for  the  newly  elected 
Praesidium,  the  president  and  two  vice-presi- 
dents of  the  Reichstag,  to  be  received  in  audi- 
ence by  the  Emperor.  On  this  occasion  the  So- 
cialists forbade  their  representative  to  go,  and 
the  Emperor,  therefore,  refused  to  receive  any 
of  them.  As  usual,  they  played  into  his  hands. 
Hans  bleibt  immer  Hans,  and  on  this  occasion 
his  vulgar  lack  of  good  manners  only  brought 
contumely  upon  the  whole  Reichstag,  and  left 
the  Emperor  as  the  outstanding  dignified  figure 
in  the  controversy.  Such  behavior  is  not  cal- 
culated to  invite  confidence,  and  not  likely  to 
induce  this  enemy-surrounded  nation  to  put  its 
destinies  in  such  hands,  not  at  any  rate  for  some 
time  to  come.  "Though  thou  shouldest  bray  a 
fool  in  a  mortar  among  wheat  with  a  pestle, 
yet  will  not  his  foolishness  depart  from  him." 

Intellectually  Germany  is  a  republic,  and  we 
Americans  perhaps  beyond  all  other  peoples 
have  profited  by  her  literature,  her  philosophy, 
her  music,  her  scientific  and  economic  teaching. 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     193 

We  have  kneaded  these  things  into  our  political 
as  well  as  into  our  intellectual  life.  "Intel- 
lectual emancipation,  if  it  does  not  give  us  at 
the  same  time  control  over  ourselves,  is  poison- 
ous." And  who  writes  thus?  Goethe!  But 
the  intellectual  freedom  of  Germany  has  done 
next  to  nothing  to  bring  about  political  or,  in 
the  realm  of  journalism,  personal  self-control. 

It  is  a  strange  state  of  affairs.  Intelligent 
men  and  women  in  Germany  do  not  realize  it. 
Not  once,  but  many  times,  I  have  been  told: 
"You  foreigners  are  forever  commenting  upon 
our  bureaucracy,  our  officialdom,  but  it  is  not 
as  all-powerful  as  you  think.  We  have  plenty 
of  freedom!"  These  people  are  often  them- 
selves officials,  nearly  always  related  to,  or  of 
the  society,  of  the  ruling  class.  The  rulers  and 
the  ruling  class  have  naturally  no  sense  of  op- 
pression, no  feeling  that  they  are  unduly  subject 
to  others,  since  the  others  are  themselves.  I 
am  quite  willing  to  believe  of  my  own  and  of 
other  people's  personal  opinions  that  they  are 
not  dogmas  merely  because  they  are  baptized  in 
intolerance.  I  must  leave  it  to  the  reader  to 
judge  from  the  facts,  whether  or  no  the  Germans 
have  a  political  autonomy,  which  permits  the 
exercise  and  development  of  political  power.  A 
glance  at  the  political  parties  themselves  will 
make  this  perhaps  the  more  clear. 


194     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  official  organization  of  the  conservative 
party,  may  be  said  to  date  back  to  the  founding 
of  the  Neue  Preussische  Zeitung  in  1848,  and  the 
organization  of  the  party  in  many  parts  of  Ger- 
many. Earlier  still,  Burke  was  the  hero  of  the 
pioneers  of  this  party,  whose  first  newspaper  had 
for  editor,  no  less  a  person  than  Heinrich  von 
Kleist,  and  whose  first  endeavors  were  to  sup- 
port God  and  the  King,  and  to  throw  off  the 
yoke  of  foreign  domination. 

In  1876  was  formed  the  Deutsch-Konservativ 
party  supporting  Bismarck.  "Konigthum  von 
Gottes  Gnaden"  is  still  their  watchword,  with  op- 
position to  Social  Democracy,  support  of  im- 
perialism, agrarian  and  industrial  protection,  and 
Christian  teaching  in  the  schools,  as  the  planks 
of  their  platform.  They  also  combat  Jewish  in- 
fluence everywhere,  particularly  in  the  schools. 
Allied  to  this  party  is  the  Bund  der  Landwirte 
and  the  Deutscher  Bauernbund.  In  the  election 
of  1912  they  elected  forty -five  representatives  to 
the  Reichstag,  a  serious  falling  off  from  the  sixty- 
three  seats  held  previous  to  that  election.  The 
Free  Conservative  portion  of  the  Conservative 
party,  is  composed  of  the  less  autocratic  mem- 
bers of  the  landed  nobility,  but  there  is  little 
difference  in  their  point  of  view. 

The  Centrum,  or  Catholic  party,  is  in  theory 
not  a  religious  party;  in  practice  it  is,  though  it 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     195 

does  not  bar  out  Protestant  members  who  hold 
similar  views  to  their  own.  Its  political  activity 
began  in  1870,  and  the  first  call  for  the  formation 
of  the  party  came  from  Reichensperger  in  the 
Kolnischer  Volkszeitung.  The  famous  leader  of 
the  party,  and  a  politician  who  even  held  his  own 
against  Bismarck,  was  the  Hanoverian  Justiz- 
minister,  Doctor  Ludwig  Windthorst.  The7 
stormy  time  of  the  party  was  from  1873  to  1878, 
when  Bismarck  attempted  to  oppose  the  growing 
power  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  more  par- 
ticularly of  the  Jesuits.  The  so-called  May  laws 
of  that  year  forbade  Roman  Catholic  interven- 
tion in  civil  affairs;  obliged  all  ministers  of  re- 
ligion to  pass  the  higher-schools  examinations 
and  to  study  theology  three  years  at  a  university ; 
made  all  seminaries  subject  to  state  inspection; 
and  gave  fuller  protection  to  those  of  other 
creeds.  In  1878  Bismarck  needed  the  support 
of  the  Centrum  party  to  carry  through  the  new 
tariff,  and  the  May  laws,  except  that  regarding 
civil  marriage,  were  repealed.  The  party  stands 
for  religious  teaching  in  the  primary  schools, 
Christian  marriage,  federal  character  of  empire, 
protection,  and  independence  of  the  state. 
More  than  any  other  party  it  has  kept  its  rep- 
resentation in  the  Reichstag  at  about  the  same 
number.  In  1903  they  cast  1,875,300  votes  and 
had  100  members.  In  1907  they  had  103  mem- 


196     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

bers,  and  in  the  last  election  of  1912  they  won 
93  seats.  Even  this  Catholic  party  is  now  di- 
vided. Count  Oppersdorff  leads  the  "Only- 
Catholic"  party,  against  the  more  liberal  section 
which  has  its  head-quarters  at  Cologne,  where 
the  late  Cardinal  Fischer  was  the  leader.  At  the 
session  of  the  Reichstag  in  1913,  when  the  ques- 
tion of  the  readmission  of  the  Jesuits  was  raised, 
the  Centrum  party  even  sided  with  the  Social- 
ists in  the  matter  of  the  expropriation  law  for 
Posen,  in  order  to  annoy  the  chancellor  for  his 
opposition  to  themselves.  Such  political  mis- 
cegenation as  this  does  not  show  a  high  level  of 
faith  or  of  policy. 

It  may  be  of  interest  to  the  reader  to  know 
that  in  1903  the  population  of  Germany  was 
58,629,000,  and  the  number  qualified  to  vote 
12,531,000;  in  1907  the  population  was  61,983,- 
000,  and  the  number  qualified  to  vote,  13,353,- 
000;  in  1912  the  population  was  65,407,000,  and 
the  qualified  voters  numbered  over  14,000,000, 
of  whom  12,124,503  voted.  In  1903  there  were 
9,496,000  votes  cast;  in  1907,  11,304,000.  The 
German  Reichstag  has  397  members,  or  1  rep- 
resentative to  every  156,000  inhabitants;  the 
United  States  House  of  Representatives  has  433 
members,  or  1  for  every  212,000  inhabitants; 
England,  670  members,  or  1  for  every  62,000; 
France,  584,  or  1  for  every  67,000;  Italy,  508,  or 


1  for  every  64,000;  Austria,  516,  or  1  for  every 
51,000. 

Despite  the  fact  that  the  Conservative  and 
the  Catholic  parties  have  much  in  common,  and 
are  the  parties  of  the  Right  and  Centre:  these 
names  are  given  the  political  parties  in  the 
Reichstag  according  to  their  grouping  on  the 
right,  centre,  and  left  of  the  house,  looking  from 
the  tribune  or  speaker's  platform,  from  which  all 
set  speeches  are  delivered,  they  are  often  at  odds 
among  themselves,  and  Bismarck  and  Billow 
brought  about  tactical  differences  among  them 
for  their  own  purposes.  Their  programme  may 
be  summed  up  as  "As  you  were,"  which  is  not 
inspiring  either  as  an  incentive  or  as  a  command. 

The  Liberal  parties  are  the  National  liberale; 
Fortschrittspartei,  or  Progressives;  and  the  Frei- 
sinnige  Volkspartei,  or  Liberal  Democratic  party. 

The  National  Liberal  party  was  strongest  dur- 
ing the  days  when  Prussia's  efforts  were  directed 
mainly  toward  a  federation  and  a  strengthening 
of  the  bonds  which  hold  the  states  together; 
"unter  dem  Donner  der  Kanonen  von  Konig- 
gratz  ist  der  nationalliberale  Gedanke  geboren." 
Loyalty  to  emperor  and  empire,  country  above 
party,  a  fleet  competent  to  protect  the  country 
and  its  overseas  interests,  are  watchwords  of  the 
party.  The  party  is  protectionist,  and  in  matters 


198     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  school  and  church  administration  in  accord 
with  the  Free  Conservatives. 

The  Liberal  Democratic  party  demands  elec- 
toral reform,  no  duties  on  foodstuffs,  and  im- 
perial insurance  laws  for  the  workingmen. 

The  Fortschrittspartei  finds  its  intellectual 
beginnings,  in  the  condensing  of  the  hazy  clouds 
of  revolution  in  1848,  in  the  persons  of  Wilhelm 
von  Humboldt  and  Freiherr  von  Stein.  Politi- 
cally, the  party  came  into  being  in  1861,  and 
Waldeck,  von  Hoverbeck,  and  Virchow  are  fa- 
miliar names  to  students  of  German  political 
history;  later  Eugen  Richter  was  the  leader  of 
the  party  in  the  Reichstag.  This  party  is  still 
for  free-trade,  in  opposition  to  military  and  bu- 
reaucratic government,  favorable  to  parliamen- 
tary government.  Of  the  grouping  and  regroup- 
ing of  these  parties;  of  their  divisions  for  and 
against  Bismarck's  policies;  of  their  splits  on  the 
questions  of  free-trade  and  protection;  of  their 
leanings  now  to  the  right,  now  to  the  left;  of 
their  differences  over  details  of  taxation  for 
purposes  of  defence;  of  their  attitudes  toward  a 
powerful  fleet,  and  toward  the  Jesuits,  it  would 
require  a  volume,  and  a  large  one,  to  describe. 
Though  it  is  dangerous  to  characterize  them, 
they  may  be  said  without  inaccuracy  to  repre- 
sent the  democratic  movement  in  Germany  both 


in  thought  and  political  action,  and  to  hold  a 
wavering  place  between  the  Conservatives  and 
the  Social  Democrats. 

The  Social  Democratic  party,  the  party  of  the 
wage-earners,  only  assumed  recognizable  outlines 
after  the  appeal  of  Ferdinand  Lassalle  for  a 
workingman's  congress  at  Leipsic  in  1863.  In 
1877  they  mustered  493,000  voters.  Bismarck 
and  the  monarchy  looked  askance  at  their  grow- 
ing power.  It  was  attempted  to  pass  a  law, 
punishing  with  fine  and  imprisonment:  "wer  in 
einer  den  offentlichen  Frieden  gefahrdenden 
Weise  verschiedene  Klassen  der  Bevolkerung 
gegeneinander  offentlich  aufreizt  oder  wer  in 
gleicher  Weise  die  Institute  der  Ehe,  der  Fa- 
milie  und  des  Eigentums  offentlich  durch  Rede 
oder  Schrift  angreift."  This  was  a  direct  attack 
upon  the  Socialists,  but  the  Reichstag  refused  to 
pass  the  law.  In  May,  1878,  and  shortly  after 
in  June,  two  attempts  were  made  upon  the  life  of 
the  Kaiser.  Bismarck  then  easily  and  quickly 
forced  through  the  new  law  against  the  So- 
cialists. 

Under  this  law  newspapers  were  suppressed, 
organizations  dissolved,  meetings  forbidden,  and 
certain  leaders  banished.  For  twelve  years  the 
party  was  kept  under  the  watchful  restraint  of 
the  police,  and  their  propaganda  made  difficult 
and  in  many  places  impossible.  After  the  repeal 


200     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  this  law,  and  for  the  last  twenty  years,  the 
party  has  increased  with  surprising  rapidity.  In 
1893  the  Social  Democrats  cast  1,787,000  votes; 
in  1898,  2,107,000;  in  1903,  more  than  3,000,000; 
and  in  the  last  election,  1912,  4,238,919;  and  they 
have  just  returned  110  delegates  to  the  Reichstag 
out  of  a  total  of  397  members. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  in  America  there  is  one 
Socialist  member  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives; while  in  Germany,  which  combines  auto- 
cratic methods  of  government,  with  something 
more  nearly  approaching  state  ownership  and 
control,  than  any  other  country  in  the  world,  the 
most  numerous  party  in  the  present  Reichstag 
is  that  of  the  Social  Democrats. 

Freedom  is  the  only  medicine  for  discontent. 
There  is  no  rope  for  the  hanging  of  a  demagogue 
like  free  speech;  no  such  disastrous  gift  for  the 
socialist  as  freedom  of  action.  Imagine  what 
would  have  happened  in  America  if  we  had  at- 
tempted to  suppress  Bryan!  The  result  of  giv- 
ing him  free  play  and  a  fair  hearing,  the  result  of 
allowing  the  people  to  judge  for  themselves,  has 
been  a  prolonged  spectacle  of  political  hari-kiri 
which  has  had  a  wholesome  though  negative 
educational  influence.  The  most  accomplished 
oratorical  Pierrot  of  our  day,  who  changes  his 
political  philosophy  as  easily  as  he  changes  his 
costume,  has  seen  one  hundred  and  sixty  cities 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES    201 

and  towns  in  America  turn  to  government  by 
commission,  and  has  kept  the  heraldic  donkey 
always  just  out  of  reach  of  the  political  carrots, 
until  the  Republican  party  itself  fairly  pushed 
the  donkey  into  the  carrot-field,  but  even  then 
with  another  leader.  No  autocrat  could  have 
done  so  much. 

As  early  as  1887  Auer,  Bebel,  and  Liebknecht 
outlined  the  programme  of  the  party,  and  this 
programme,  again  revised  at  Erfurt  in  1891, 
stands  as  the  expression  of  their  demands.  They 
claim  that:  "Die  Arbeiterklasse  kann  ihre  oko- 
nomischen  Kampfe  nicht  fiihren  und  ihre  okono- 
mische  Organisation  nicht  entwickeln  ohne  polit- 
ische  Rechte."  Roughly  they  demand :  the  right 
to  form  unions  and  to  hold  public  meetings ;  sepa- 
ration of  church  and  state;  education  free  and 
secular,  and  the  feeding  of  school-children;  state 
expenditure  to  be  met  exclusively  by  taxes  on 
incomes,  property,  and  inheritance;  people  to 
decide  on  peace  and  war;  direct  system  of  voting, 
one  adult  one  vote;  citizen  army  for  defence; 
referendum;  international  court  of  arbitration. 
Their  leader  in  the  Reichstag  to-day  is  Bebel, 
and  from  what  I  have  heard  of  the  debates  in 
that  assembly  I  should  judge  that  they  have 
not  only  a  majority  over  any  other  party  in 
numbers,  but  also  in  speaking  ability.  The 
members  of  the  Socialist  party  always  leave  the 


202     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 


house  in  a  body,  at  the  end  of  each  session,  just 
before  the  cheers  are  called  for,  for  the  Emperor. 
They  have  become  more  and  more  daring  of  late 
in  their  outspoken  criticism  of  both  the  Emperor 
and  his  ministers.  In  consequence,  they  are  re- 
plied to  with  ever-increasing  dislike  and  bitter- 
ness by  their  opponents.  At  a  recent  banquet  of 
old  university  students  in  Berlin,  Freiherr  von 
Zedlitz,  presiding,  quoted  Barth  and  Richter: 
"The  victory  of  Social  Democracy  means  the 
destruction  of  German  civilization,  and  a  Social 
Democratic  state  would  be  nothing  more  than  a 
gigantic  house  of  correction." 

In  addition  to  the  four  important  political 
divisions  in  the  Reichstag,  the  Conservative, 
Liberal,  Clerical,  and  Socialist,  there  are  many 
subdivisions  of  these.  Since  1871  there  have 
been  some  forty  different  parties  represented, 
eleven  conservative,  fourteen  liberal,  two  cleri- 
cal, nine  national-particularist,  and  five  socialist. 
To-day,  besides  four  small  groups  and  certain 
representatives  acknowledging  no  party,  there 
are  some  eleven  different  factions. 


1871 

1881 

1893 

1907 

1912 

Right,   or   Con- 

servative .... 

895,000 

1,210,000 

1,806,000 

2,141,000 

1,149,916 

Liberal  

1,884,000 

1,948,000 

2,102,000 

3,078,000 

3,227,846 

Clerical    

973,000 

1,618,000 

1,920,000 

2,779,000 

2,012,990 

Social  Democrats 

124,000 

312,000 

1,787,000 

3,259,000 

4,238,919 

GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES    203 

So  far  as  one  may  so  divide  them,  the  voters 
have  aligned  themselves  as  follows:  In  the  last 
elections,  in  1912,  the  Conservatives  and  their 
allies  elected  75  members;  the  Clericals,  93;  the 
Poles,  18;  and  the  Guelphs,  5;  and  these  come 
roughly  under  the  heading  of  the  party  of 
the  Right.  Under  the  heading  Left,  the  Na- 
tional Liberals  and  Progressive  party  elected  88, 
and  the  Social  Democrats  110  members  to  the 
Reichstag.  The  parties  stand  therefore  roughly 
divided  at  the  moment  of  writing  as  191  Conser- 
vative, and  200  Radical,  with  6  members  unac- 
counted for.  The  Poles  with  18  seats,  the 
Alsatians  with  5,  the  Guelphs  and  Lorrainers 
and  Danes  with  8  seats,  and  the  no-party  with 
2  seats,  are  also  represented,  but  are  here  placed 
with  the  party  of  the  Right.  To  divide  the 
parties  into  two  camps  gives  the  result  that, 
roughly,  four  and  a  half  millions  voted  that  they 
were  satisfied,  and  seven  and  a  half  millions 
that  they  were  not. 

No  doubt  any  chancellor,  including  Doctor 
von  Bethmann-Hollweg,  would  be  glad  to  divide 
the  Reichstag  as  definitely  and  easily  as  I  have 
done.  Theoretically  these  divisions  may  be  use- 
ful to  the  reader,  but  practically  to  the  leader 
they  are  useless.  Bebel,  the  leader  of  the  Social 
Democrats,  declares  himself  ready  to  shoulder  a 


204     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

musket  to  defend  the  country ;  Heydebrandt,  the 
leader  of  the  Conservatives,  and  possibly  the 
most  effective  speaker  in  the  Reichstag,  has 
spoken  warmly  in  favor  of  social  reform  laws ;  the 
Clericals  are  for  peace,  almost  at  any  price;  the 
Agrarians  or  Junkers  for  a  tariff  on  foodstuffs  and 
cattle,  and  one  might  continue  analyzing  the 
parties  until  one  would  be  left  bewildered  at  their 
refining  of  the  political  issues  at  stake.  Back  to 
God  and  the  Emperor;  and  forward  to  a  consti- 
tutional monarchy  with  the  chancellor  responsi- 
ble to  the  Reichstag,  and  perhaps  later  a  repub- 
lic, represent  the  two  extremes.  Between  the 
two  everything  and  anything.  It  is  hard  to  put 
together  a  team  out  of  these  diverse  elements 
that  a  chancellor  can  drive  with  safety,  and  with 
the  confidence  that  he  will  finally  arrive  with  his 
load  at  his  destination.  In  addition  to  these 
parties  there  are  the  frankly  disaffected  repre- 
sentatives of  conquered  Poland,  of  conquered 
Holstein,  of  conquered  Alsace-Lorraine,  and  of 
conquered  Hanover,  this  last  known  as  the 
Guelph  party;  all  of  them  anti-Prussian. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  com- 
ments, deductions,  and  prophecies  of  foreigners 
are  wildly  astray  when  dealing  with  German  pol- 
itics. In  America,  religious  differences  and  ra- 
cial differences  play  a  small  role  at  Washington; 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES     205 

but  the  220  Protestants,  the  141  Catholics,  the  3 
Jews,  the  5  free-thinkers,  and  so  on,  in  the  last 
Reichstag  are  in  a  way  parties  as  well.  In  that 
same  assembly  2  members  were  over  80,  78 
over  60,  271  between  40  and  60,  42  under  40, 
and  3  under  30  years  of  age.  One  hundred  and 
six  members  were  landed  proprietors;  220  were 
of  the  liberal  professions,  including  37  authors, 
35  judges  or  magistrates,  21  clericals,  7  doctors, 
and  1  artist;  13  merchants;  21  manufacturers; 
and  20  shopkeepers  and  laborers.  Seventy-two 
members  were  of  the  nobility,  a  decided  falling 
off  from  1878,  when  they  numbered  162.  Two 
hundred  and  fifty  members  were  educated  at  a 
university,  and  practically  all  may  be  said  to 
have  had  an  education  equal  if  not  superior  to 
that  given  in  our  smaller  colleges. 

In  the  American  Congress,  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  we  have  212  lawyers,  though 
there  are  only  135,000  lawyers  in  our  population 
of  90,000,000.  We  have  in  that  same  assembly 
50  business  men,  representing  the  15,000,000  of 
our  people  engaged  in  trade  and  industry.  Per- 
haps the  German  Reichstag  is  as  fairly  represent- 
ative as  our  own  House  of  Representatives, 
though  both  assemblies  show  the  babyhood  of 
civilization  which  still  votes  for  flashing  eyes, 
thumping  fists,  hollering  patriotism,  and  smooth 


206     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

phrases.  The  surprising  feature  of  elective  as- 
semblies is  that  here  and  there  Messrs.  Self- 
Control,  Ability,  Dignity,  and  Independence 
find  seats  at  all.  The  members  are  paid,  since 
1906,  a  salary7  of  3,000  marks,  with  a  deduction 
of  20  marks  for  each  day's  absence.  They  have 
free  passes  over  German  railways  during  the 
session.  The  Reichstag  is  elected  every  five 
years. 

The  appearance  of  the  Reichstag  to  the 
stranger  is  notable  for  the  presence  of  military, 
naval,  and  clerical  uniforms.  It  is,  as  one  looks 
down  upon  them,  an  assembly  where  at  least 
one-fourth  are  bald  or  thin-haired,  and  together 
they  give  the  impression  of  being  big  in  the 
waist,  careless  in  costume,  slovenly  in  carriage, 
and  lacking  proper  feeding,  grooming,  and  ex- 
ercise. It  is  clearly  an  assemblage,  not  of  men 
of  action,  but  of  men  of  theories.  Not  only 
their  appearance  betrays  this,  but  their  debates 
as  well,  and  what  one  knows  of  their  individual 
training  and  preferences  goes  to  substantiate  this 
judgment  of  them.  There  are  no  soldiers,  sail- 
ors, explorers,  governors  of  alien  people;  no  men, 
in  short,  who  have  solved  practical  problems 
dealing  with  men,  but  only  theorists.  Such  men 
as  Gotzen,  Solf ,  and  others,  who  have  had  actual 
experience  of  dealing  with  men,  are  rare  excep- 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES    207 

tions.  Probably  the  best  men  in  Germany  wish, 
and  wish  heartily,  that  there  were  more  such 
men;  indeed,  I  betray  no  secret  when  I  declare 
that  the  most  intelligent  and  patriotic  criticism 
in  Germany  coincides  with  my  own. 

The  electoral  divisions  of  Germany,  as  we  have 
noted  elsewhere,  have  not  been  changed  for 
forty  years,  with  a  consequent  disproportionate 
representation  from  the  rural,  as  over  against  the 
enormously  increased  population,  of  the  urban 
and  industrial  districts.  The  Conservatives,  for 
example,  in  1907  gained  1  seat  for  every  18,232 
votes ;  the  Clericals  or  Centrum,  1  seat  for  every 
20,626  votes;  the  National  Liberals,  1  for  every 
30,635  votes;  and  the  Social  Democrats,  1  for 
every  75,781  votes.  It  may  be  seen  from  this, 
how  overwhelming  must  be  the  majority  of  votes 
cast  by  the  Social  Democrats,  in  order  to  gain  a 
majority  representation  in  the  Reichstag  itself. 
In  1912  they  cast  more  than  one-third  of  the 
votes,  and  are  represented  by  110  members  out 
of  the  total  of  397. 

For  the  student  of  German  politics  it  is  im- 
portant to  remember,  that  the  Social  Demo- 
crats are  not  all  representatives  of  socialism  or  of 
democracy.  Their  demands  at  this  present  time 
are  far  from  the  radical  theory  that  all  sources  of 
production  should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  people. 


208     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Only  a  small  number  of  very  red  radicals  demand 
that.  Their  successes  have  been,  and  they  are 
real  successes,  along  the  lines  of  greater  protec- 
tion and  more  political  liberty  for  the  working- 
man.  The  number  of  their  votes  is  swelled  by 
thousands  of  voters  who  express  their  general 
discontent  in  that  way.  The  state  in  Germany 
owns  railroads,  telegraph  and  telephone  lines; 
operates  mines  and  certain  industries,  and  both 
controls  and  directly  helps  certain  large  manu- 
factories which  are  either  of  benefit  to  the  state, 
or  which,  if  they  were  entirely  independent, 
might  prove  a  danger  to  the  state.  The  state 
enforces  insurance  against  sickness,  accident,  and 
old  age,  and  the  three  million  office-holders  are 
dependent  upon  the  state  for  their  livelihood  and 
their  pensions. 

It  is  a  striking  thing  in  Germany  to  see  human 
nature  cropping  out,  even  under  these  ideal  con- 
ditions; for  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  state 
could  be  more  grandmotherly  in  her  officious  care 
of  her  own.  But  this  is  not  enough.  Physical 
safety  is  not  enough,  the  demand  is  for  political 
freedom,  and  for  a  government  answerable  to 
the  people  and  the  people's  representatives. 
Rich  men,  powerful  men,  representative  men  by 
the  thousands,  men  whom  one  meets  of  all  sorts 
and  conditions,  and  who  are  neither  radical  nor 


GERMAN  POLITICAL  PARTIES    209 

socialistic,  vote  the  Social  Democrat  ticket. 
The  Social  Democrats  are  by  no  means  all  demo- 
crats nor  all  socialists.  As  a  body  of  voters  they 
are  united  only  in  the  expression  of  their  discon- 
tent with  a  government  of  officials,  practically 
chosen  and  kept  in  power  over  their  heads,  and 
with  whose  tenure  of  office  they  have  nothing 
to  do. 

The  fact  that  the  members  of  the  Reichstag 
are  not  in  the  saddle,  but  are  used  unwillingly 
and  often  contemptuously  as  a  necessary  and 
often  stubborn  and  unruly  pack-animal  by  the 
Kaiser-appointed  ministers;  the  fact  that  they 
are  pricked  forward,  or  induced  to  move  by  a 
tempting  feed  held  just  beyond  the  nose,  has 
something  to  do,  no  doubt,  with  the  lack  of 
unanimity  w^hich  exists.  The  diverse  elements 
debate  with  one  another,  and  waste  their  energy 
in  rebukes  and  recriminations  which  lead  no- 
where and  result  in  nothing.  I  have  listened  to 
many  debates  in  the  Reichstag  where  the  one 
aim  of  the  speeches  seemed  to  be  merely  to  un- 
burden the  soul  of  the  speaker.  He  had  no 
plan,  no  proposal,  no  solution,  merely  a  con- 
fession to  make.  After  forty-odd  years  the 
Germans,  in  many  ways  the  most  cultivated 
nation  in  the  world,  are  still  without  real  rep- 
resentative government. 


210     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Why  should  the  press  or  society  take  this  as- 
sembly very  seriously,  when,  as  the  most  im- 
portant measure  of  which  they  are  capable,  they 
can  vote  to  have  themselves  dismissed  by  de- 
clining to  pass  supply  bills;  and  when,  as  has 
happened  four  times  in  their  history,  they  return 
chastened,  tamed,  and  amenable  to  the  wishes  of 
their  master? 

No  wonder  the  political  writing  in  the  press 
seems  to  us  vaporish  and  without  definite  aims. 
It  is  perhaps  due  to  this  weakness  that  the  writ- 
ing in  the  German  journals  upon  other  subjects 
is  very  good  indeed.  The  best  energies  of  the 
writers  are  devoted  to  what  may  be  called  edu- 
cational and  literary  expositions.  In  the  field 
of  foreign  politics  the  German  press  is  less  well- 
informed,  less  instructive,  and  consequently  irri- 
tating. The  poverty  of  material  resources  makes 
such  writing  as  that  of  Sir  Valentine  Chirrol, 
and  in  former  days  that  of  Mr.  G.  W.  Smalley, 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  German  journalist,  and 
their  press  is  painfully  narrow,  frequently  unfair, 
and  often  purposely  insulting  to  foreign  coun- 
tries. They  are  not  only  anti-English,  but  anti- 
French,  an ti- American,  and  at  times  bitter.  If 
the  American  people  read  the  German  news- 
papers there  would  be  little  love  lost  between  us. 


BERLIN 

HE  is  a  fortunate  traveller  who  enters 
Berlin  from  the  west,  and  toward  the 
end  of  his  journey  rolls  along  over  the 
twelve  or  fifteen  miles  of  new  streets,  glides 
under  the  Brandenburger  Tor,  and  finds  himself 
in  Unter  den  Linden.  The  Kaiserdamm,  Bis- 
marck Strasse,  Berliner  Strasse,  Charlottenbur- 
gerchaussee,  Unter  den  Linden,  give  the  most 
splendid  street  entrance  into  a  city  in  the  world. 
The  pavement  is  without  a  hole,  without  a 
crack,  and  as  clear  of  rubbish  of  any  kind  as  a 
well-kept  kitchen  floor.  The  cleanliness  is  so 
noticeable  that  one  looks  searchingly  for  even  a 
scrap  of  paper,  for  some  trace  of  negligence,  to 
modify  this  superiority  over  the  streets  of  our 
American  cities.  But  there  is  no  consolation; 
the  superiority  is  so  incontestable  that  no  com- 
parison is  possible.  For  the  whole  twelve  or 
fifteen  miles  the  streets  are  lined  with  trees,  or 
shrubs,  or  flowers,  with  well-kept  grass,  and  with 
separate  roads  on  each  side  for  horsemen  or  foot- 
passengers.  In  the  spring  and  summer  the 

streets  are  a  veritable  garden. 

211 


212    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Broadway  is  80  feet  wide;  Fifth  Avenue  is  100 
feet  wide;  the  Champs  Elysees  is  233  feet  wide; 
and  Unter  den  Linden  is  196  feet  wide,  and  has 
70  feet  of  roadway. 

For  every  square  yard  of  wood  pavement  in 
Berlin  there  are  24  square  yards  of  asphalt  and 
37  square  yards  of  stone.  The  total  length  of 
streets  cleaned  in  Berlin,  which  has  an  area  of 
25  square  miles,  according  to  a  report  of  some 
few  years  ago,  was  316  miles;  there  are  700 
streets  and  some  70  open  places,  and  the  area 
cleaned  daily  was  8,160,000  square  yards.  The 
cost  of  the  care  of  the  Berlin  streets  has  risen 
with  the  growth  of  the  city  from  1,670,847 
marks,1  in  1880,  to  6,068,557  marks,  in  1910. 
The  total  cost  of  the  street-cleaning  in  New 
York,  in  1907,  was  $9,758,922,  and  in  Manhat- 
tan, The  Bronx,  and  Brooklyn  5,129  men  were 
employed;  while  the  working  force  in  Berlin,  in 
1911,  was  2,150.  It  should  be  said  also  that  in 
New  York  an  enormous  amount  of  scavenging  is 
paid  for  privately  besides.  In  New  York  the 
street-sweepers  are  paid  $2.19  a  day;  in  Berlin 
the  foremen  receive  4.75  marks  the  first  three 
years,  and  thereafter  5  marks;  the  men  3.75 
marks  the  first  three  years,  then  4  marks,  arid 
after  nine  years'  service  4.50  marks.  The  boy 

'The  mark  is  equal  to  a  little  less  than  twenty-five  cents. 


BERLIN  213 

assistants  receive  2  marks,  after  two  years  2.25 
marks,  and  after  four  years'  service  3  marks. 
The  whole  force  is  paid  every  fourteen  days. 
The  street-cleaning  department  is  divided  into 
thirty-three  districts,  these  districts  into  four 
groups,  each  with  an  inspector,  and  all  under  a 
head-inspector.  Attached  to  each  district  are 
depots  with  yards  for  storage  of  vehicles,  appa- 
ratus, brooms,  shovels,  uniforms,  with  machine 
shops,  where  on  more  than  one  occasion  I  have 
seen  enthusiastic  workmen  trying  experiments 
with  new  machinery  to  facilitate  their  work. 

Over  this  whole  force  presides,  a  politician? 
Far  from  it;  a  technically  educated  man  of  wide 
experience,  and,  of  the  official  of  my  visit  I  may 
add,  of  great  courtesy  and  singular  enthusiasm 
both  for  his  task  and  for  the  men  under  him. 
What  his  politics  are  concerns  nobody,  what  the 
politics  of  the  party  in  power  are  concerns  him 
not  at  all.  That  an  individual,  or  a  group  of  in- 
dividuals, powerful  financially  or  politically, 
should  influence  him  in  his  choice  or  in  his 
placing  of  the  men  under  him  is  unthinkable. 
That  a  political  boss  in  this  or  in  that  district, 
should  dictate  who  should  and  who  should  not, 
be  employed  in  the  street-cleaning  department, 
even  down  to  the  meanest  remover  of  dung  with 
a  dust-pan,  as  was  done  for  years  in  New  York 


214     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  every  other  city  in  America,  would  be 
looked  upon  here  as  a  farce  of  Topsy-Turvydom, 
with  Alice  in  Wonderland  in  the  title-role. 

The  streets  are  cleaned  for  the  benefit  of  the 
people,  and  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  pockets  of  a 
political  aristocracy.  The  public  service  is  a 
guardian,  not  a  predatory  organization.  In  our 
country  when  a  man  can  do  nothing  else  he  be- 
comes a  public  servant;  in  Germany  he  can  only 
become  a  public  servant  after  severe  examina- 
tions and  ample  proofs  of  fitness.  The  supe- 
riority of  one  service  over  the  other  is  moral,  not 
merely  mechanical. 

*The  street-cleaning  department  is  recruited 
from  soldiers  who  have  served  their  time,  not 
over  thirty -five  years  of  age,  and  who  must  pass 
a  doctor's  examination,  and  be  passed  also  by 
the  police.  The  rules  as  to  their  conduct,  their 
uniforms,  their  rights,  and  their  duties,  down  to 
such  minute  carefulness  as  that  they  may  not 
smoke  on  duty  "except  when  engaged  in  pecul- 
iarly dirty  and  offensive  labor,"  are  here,  as  in  all 
official  matters  in  Germany,  outlined  in  laby- 
rinthine detail.  Sickness,  death,  accident,  are 
all  provided  for  with  a  pension,  and  there  are 
also  certain  gifts  of  money  for  long  service. 
The  police  and  the  street-cleaning  department 
co-operate  to  enforce  the  law,  where  private  com- 


BERLIN  215 

panics  or  the  city-owned  street-railways  are  neg- 
ligent in  making  repairs,  or  in  replacing  pave- 
ment that  has  been  disturbed  or  destroyed. 
There  is  no  escape.  If  the  work  is  not  done 
promptly  and  satisfactorily,  it  is  done  by  the  city, 
charged  against  the  delinquent,  and  collected ! ' 

One  need  go  into  no  further  details  as  to  why 
and  wherefore  Berlin,  Hamburg,  even  Cologne 
in  these  days,  Leipsic,  Diisseldorf,  Dresden, 
Munich,  keep  their  streets  in  such  fashion,  that 
they  are  as  corridors  to  the  outside  of  Irish 
hovels,  as  compared  to  the  city  streets  of  Amer- 
ica; for  the  definite  and  all-including  answer 
and  explanation  are  contained  in  the  two  words: 
no  politics. 

Berlin  is  governed  by  a  town  council,  under  a 
chief  burgomaster  and  a  burgomaster,  and  the 
civic  magistracy,  and  the  police,  these  last,  how- 
ever, under  state  control.  The  chief  burgomas- 
ter and  the  burgomaster  are  chosen  from  trained 
and  experienced  candidates,  and  are  always  men 
of  wide  experience  and  severe  technical  training, 
who  have  won  a  reputation  in  other  towns  as 
successful  municipal  administrators. 

In  May,  1912,  Wermuth,  the  son  of  the  blind 
King  of  Hanover's  right-hand  man,  and  he  him- 
self the  recently  resigned  imperial  secretary  of 
the  treasury,  was  elected  Oberburgomaster  of 


216     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Berlin.  Such  is  the  standing  of  the  men  named 
to  govern  the  German  cities.  It  is  as  though 
Elihu  Root  should  be  elected  mayor  of  New 
York,  with  Colonel  John  Biddle  as  police  com- 
missioner, and  Colonel  Goethals  as  commissioner 
of  street-cleaning.  May  the  day  come  when  we 
can  avail  ourselves  of  the  services  of  such  men  to 
govern  our  cities! 

The  magistracy  numbers  34,  of  whom  18  re- 
ceive salaries.  The  town  council  consists  of 
144  members,  half  of  whom  must  be  household- 
ers. They  are  elected  for  six  years,  and  one- 
third  of  them  retire  every  two  years,  but  are 
eligible  for  re-election.  They  are  elected  by  the 
three-class  system  of  voting,  which  is  described 
in  another  chapter.  This  three-class  system  of 
voting  results  in  certain  inequalities.  In  Prus- 
sia, for  example,  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  voters 
have  two-thirds  of  the  electoral  power,  and  rela- 
tively the  same  may  be  said  of  Berlin. 

Unlike  the  municipal  elections  in  American 
cities,  the  voters  have  only  a  simple  ballot  to  put 
in  the  ballot-box.  National  and  state  politics 
play  no  part,  and  the  voter  is  not  confused  by 
issues  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  his  city  gov- 
ernment. The  government  of  their  cities  is  ar- 
ranged for  on  the  basis  that  officials  will  be  honest, 
and  work  for  the  city  and  not  for  themselves. 


BERLIN  217 

Our  city  organizations  often  give  the  air  of  living 
under  laws  framed  to  prevent  thievery,  bribery, 
blackmailing,  and  surreptitious  murder.  We 
make  our  municipal  laws  as  though  we  were  in 
the  stone  age. 

These  German  cities  are  also,  unlike  Ameri- 
can cities,  autonomous.  They  have  no  state- 
made  charters  to  interpret  and  to  obey;  they  are 
not  restricted  as  to  debt  or  expenditure;  and  they 
are  not  in  the  grip  of  corporations  that  have 
bought  or  leased  wrater,  gas,  electricity,  or  street- 
railway  franchises,  and  these,  represented  by  the 
wealthiest  and  most  intelligent  citizens,  become, 
through  the  financial  undertakings  and  interests 
of  these  very  same  citizens,  often  the  worst  ene- 
mies of  their  own  city.  The  German  cities  are 
spared  also  the  confusion,  which  is  injected  into 
our  politics  by  a  fortunately  small  class  of  re- 
formers, with  the  prudish  peculiarities  of  morbid 
vestals;  men  who  cannot  work  with  other  men, 
and  who  bring  the  virile  virtues,  the  sound  char- 
ities, and  wholesome  morality  into  contempt. 

We  all  know  him,  the  smug  snob  of  virtue. 
You  may  find  him  a  professor  at  the  university; 
you  may  find  him  leading  prayer-meetings  and 
preaching  pure  politics;  you  may  find  him  the 
bloodless  philanthropist;  you  may  find  him  a 
rank  atheist,  with  his  patents  for  the  bringing 


218     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

in  of  his  own  kingdom  of  heaven.  These  are 
the  men  above  all  others  who  make  the  Tam- 
manyizing  of  our  politics  possible.  Honest  men 
cannot  abide  the  hot-house  atmosphere  of  their 
self-conscious  virtue.  Nothing  is  more  discour- 
aging to  robust  virtue  than  the  criticisms  of 
teachers  of  ethics,  who  live  in  coddled  comfort, 
upon  private  means,  and  other  people's  ideas. 

Germany  is  just  now  suffering  from  the 
spasms  of  moral  colic,  due  to  overeating.  All 
luxury  is  in  one  form  or  another  overeating. 
Berlin  itself  has  grown  too  rapidly  into  the  vi- 
cious ways  of  a  metropolis,  where  spenders  and 
wasters  congregate.  In  1911  the  betting-ma- 
chines at  the  Berlin  race-tracks  took  in  $7,546,- 
000,  of  which  the  state  took  for  its  license,  16% 
per  cent.  There  were  128  days  of  racing,  while  in 
England  they  have  540  days'  racing  in  the  year ! 

In  1911,  1,300,000  strangers  visited  Berlin, 
of  whom  1,046,162  were  Germans,  97,683  Rus- 
sians, 39,555  Austrians,  30,550  Americans,  and 
16,600  English.  Berlin  killed  2,000,000  beasts 
for  food,  including  10,500  horses;  she  takes 
care  of  3,000  nightly  in  her  night-shelters,  puts 
away  $17,500,000  in  savings-banks,  and  has 
deposits  therein  of  $90,500,000.  On  the  other 
hand,  she  has  built  a  palace  of  vice  costing 
$1,625,000,  in  which  on  many  nights  between 


BERLIN  219 

11  P.  M.  and  2  A.  M.  they  sell  $8,000  worth  of 
champagne.  No  one  knows  his  Berlin,  who  has 
not  partaken  of  a  "Kalte  Ente,"  or  a  "Land- 
wehrtopp,"  a  "Schlummerpunsch,"  or  "Erne 
Weisse  mit  einer  Strippe."  There  is  still  a 
boyish  notion  about  dissipation,  and  they  have 
their  own  great  classic  to  quote  from,  who  in 
"Faust"  pours  forth  this  rather  raw  advice  for 
gayety: 

"Greift  nur  hinein  ins  voile  Menschenleben! 
Ein  jeder  lebt's,  nicht  vielen  ist's  bekannt, 
Und  wo  Ihr's  packt,  da  ist  es  interessant!" 

Berlin  is  still  in  the  throes  of  that  sophomor- 
ical  philosophy  of  life  which  believes  that  it  is, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  sophistication,  of  age, 
when  it  is  free  to  be  befuddled  with  wine  and 
befooled  by  women.  But  the  German  mind  has 
no  sympathy  with  hypocrisy.  They  may  be  bru- 
tal in  their  rather  material  views  of  morals,  but 
they  are  frank.  There  may  be  mental  prigs 
among  them,  but  there  are  no  moral  prigs.  In 
both  England  and  America  we  suffer  from  a  cer- 
tain morbid  ethical  daintiness.  There  is  a  ripe- 
ness of  moral  fastidiousness  that  is  often  difficult 
to  distinguish  from  rottenness.  It  is  part  of  the 
feminism  of  America,  born  of  our  prosperity,  for 
not  one  of  these  fastidious  moralists  is  not  a  rich 
man,  and  Germany  escapes  this  difficulty. 


220     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  government  of  a  German  city  is  so  sim- 
ple in  its  machinery  that  every  voter  can  easily 
understand  it.  No  doubt  Seth  Low  and  George 
L.  Rives  could  explain  to  an  intelligent  man  the 
charter  under  which  New  York  City  is  governed, 
but  they  are  very,  very  rare  exceptions. 

Our  city  government  is  bad,  not  because  de- 
mocracy is  a  failure,  not  because  Americans  are 
inherently  dishonest,  but  because  we  are  a  super- 
ficially educated  people,  untrained  to  think,  and, 
therefore,  still  worshipping  the  Jeffersonian  fe- 
tich of  divided  responsibility  between  the  three 
branches  of  the  government.  The  judicial,  the 
legislative,  and  the  executive  are,  with  minute 
care,  forced  to  check  and  to  impede  one  another, 
and  we  even  carry  this  antiquated  superstition, 
born  of  a  suspicious  and  timid  republicanism, 
into  the  government  of  our  cities.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  those  cities  in  America  which  are  gov- 
erned by  commissions,  our  cities  are  slaves  as 
compared  with  the  German  cities.  They  are 
slaves  of  the  predatory  politicians,  and  they,  on 
the  other  hand,  are  the  bribed  taskmasters  of 
the  rich  corporations.  The  German  asks  in  be- 
wilderment why  our  men  of  wealth,  of  leisure, 
and  of  intelligence  are  not  devoting  themselves  to 
the  service  of  the  state  and  the  city.  Alas,  the 
answer  is  the  pitiable  one  that  the  electoral  ma- 


BERLIN  221 

chinery  is  so  complicated  that  the  voters  can  be 
and  are,  continually  humbugged;  and  worse, 
many  of  the  wealthy  and  intelligent,  through 
their  stake  in  valuable  city  franchises,  are  incom- 
petent to  deal  fairly  with  the  municipal  affairs  of 
their  own  city.  Both  in  England  and  in  America, 
the  man  in  the  street  is  quite  sound  in  his  judg- 
ment, when  he  declines  to  trust  those  who  dab- 
ble in  securities  with  which  their  own  department 
has  dealings.  The  British  Caesar's  wife  official, 
caught  with  a  handkerchief  on  her  person,  woven 
on  the  looms  of  a  company  whose  directors  are 
dealing  with  the  British  government,  can  hardly 
claim  exemption  from  suspicion,  because  she 
bought  the  handkerchief  in  America.  We  all 
know  that  when  London  sniffles  the  value  of 
handkerchiefs  goes  up  in  New  York.  Caesar's 
wife  finds  it  difficult  to  persuade  honorable 
men  that  she  merely  had  a  financial  cold, 
but  not  the  smallest  interest  in  a  corner  in 
handkerchiefs. 

In  the  great  majority  of  German  cities  public- 
utility  services,  gas,  water,  electricity,  street- 
railways,  slaughter-houses,  and  even  canals, 
docks,  and  pawn-shops  are  owned  and  controlled 
by  the  cities  themselves.  There  is  no  loop-hole 
for  private  plunder,  and  there  is,  on  the  contrary, 
every  incentive  to  all  citizens,  and  to  the  rich  in 


222     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

particular,  to  enforce  the  strictest  economy  and 
the  most  expert  efficiency. 

What  theatres,  opera-houses,  orchestras,  mu- 
seums, what  well-paved  and  clean  streets,  what 
parks  Philadelphia,  New  York,  Chicago,  and 
San  Francisco  might  have,  had  these  cities  only 
a  part  of  the  money,  of  which  in  the  last  twenty- 
five  years  they  have  been  robbed !  It  is  true  that 
the  older  cities  of  Germany  have  traditions  be- 
hind them  that  we  lack.  Art  treasures,  old  build- 
ings, and  an  intelligent  population  demanding 
the  best  in  music  and  the  drama  we  cannot  hope 
to  supply,  but  good  house-keeping  is  another 
matter.  Berlin,  for  example,  is  a  new  city  as 
compared  with  New  York,  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
and  Detroit,  and  its  growth  has  been  very  rapid. 

It  cannot  be  said  for  us  alone  that  we  have 
grown  so  fast  that  we  have  had  no  time  to  keep 
pace  with  the  needs  of  our  population.  Berlin, 
all  Germany  indeed,  has  been  growing  at  a  pro- 
digious rate.  The  population  of  Berlin  in  1800 
was  100,000;  in  1832  only  250,000;  hardly  half  a 
million  in  1870;  while  the  population  now  is  over 
2,000,000,  and  over  3,000,000  if  one  includes  the 
suburbs,  which  are  for  all  practical  purposes  part 
and  parcel  of  Berlin.  Charlottenburg,  for  ex- 
ample, with  a  population  of  19,517  in  1871,  now 
has  a  population  of  305,976,  and  the  vicinage  of 


BERLIN  223 

Berlin  has  grown  in  every  direction  in  like  pro- 
portions. 

There  were  no  towns  in  Germany  till  the 
eighth  century,  except  those  of  the  Romans  on 
the  Rhine  and  the  Danube.  In  1850  there  were 
only  5  towns  in  Germany  with  more  than  100,000 
inhabitants,  and  in  1870  only  8;  in  1890,  26;  in 
1900,  33;  in  1905,  41;  in  1910,  47;  and  nearly  the 
whole  increase  of  population  is  now  massed  in  the 
middle-sized  and  large  cities.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  drift  of  population  in  America.  "A 
thrifty  but  rather  unprogressive  provincial  town 
of  60,000  inhabitants,"  writes  Mr.  J.  H.  Harper, 
of  New  York,  in  1810. 

Between  1860  and  1900  the  proportion  of  ur- 
ban to  rural  population  in  the  United  States  more 
than  doubled.  In  the  last  ten  years  the  per- 
centage of  people  living  in  cities,  or  other  incorpo- 
rated places  of  more  than  2,500  inhabitants,  in- 
creased from  40.5  to  46.3  per  cent,  of  the  total; 
while  twenty  years  ago  only  36.1  per  cent,  of  the 
population  lived  in  such  incorporated  places. 

As  late  as  the  thirteenth  century  the  Christian 
chivalry  of  the  time  was  spending  itself  in  the 
task  of  converting  the  heathen  of  what  is  now 
Prussia;  and  it  was  well  on  into  the  nineteenth 
century  before  serfdom  was  entirely  abolished  in 
this  region.  It  is  the  newness  and  rawness  of 


224     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  population,  in  the  streets  of  the  great  German 
and  Prussian  capital  which  surprise  and  puzzle 
the  American,  almost  more  than  the  cleanliness 
and  orderliness  of  the  streets  themselves.  It  is 
as  though  a  powerful  monarch  had  built  a  fine 
palace  and  then,  for  lack  of  company,  had  invited 
the  people  from  the  fields  and  farm-yards  to  be 
his  companions  therein. 

"Jamais  un  lourdaud,  quoi  qu'il  fasse 
Ne  saurait  passer  pour  galaud." 

One  should  read  Hazlitt's  "Essay  on  the  Cock- 
ney" to  find  phrases  for  these  Berliners.  It  is  a 
gazing,  gaping  crowd  that  straggles  along  over 
the  broad  sidewalks.  Half  a  dozen  to  a  dozen 
will  stop  and  stare  at  people  entering  or  leaving 
vehicles,  at  a  shop,  or  hotel  door.  I  have  seen  a 
knot  of  men  stop  and  stare  at  the  ladies  entering 
a  motor-car,  and  on  one  occasion  one  of  them 
wiped  off  the  glass  with  his  hand  that  he  might 
see  the  better.  It  is  not  impertinence,  it  is  merely 
bucolic  naivete.  The  city  in  the  evening  is  like 
a  country  fair,  with  its  awkward  gallantries, 
its  brute  curiosity,  its  unabashed  expressions  of, 
affection  by  hands  and  lips,  its  ogling,  coughing, 
and  other  peasant  forms  of  flirtation.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  this  people  as  a  race  show 
somewhat  less  of  reticence  in  matters  amatory 


BERLIN  225 

than  we  are  accustomed  to.  In  the  foyer  of  the 
theatre  you  may  see  a  young  officer  walking 
round  and  round,  his  arm  under  that  of  his 
fiancee  or  bride,  and  her  hand  fondly  clasped  in 
his.  It  is  a  commentary,  not  a  criticism,  on 
international  manners  that  the  German  royal 
princess,  a  particularly  sweet  and  simple  maiden, 
just  engaged  to  marry  the  heir  of  the  house 
of  Cumberland,  is  photographed  walking  in  the 
streets  of  Berlin,  her  hand  clasped  in  that  of  her 
betrothed,  and  both  he,  and  her  brother  who  ac- 
companies them,  smoking!  Gentlemen  do  not 
smoke  when  walking  or  driving  with  ladies,  with 
us,  though  I  am  not  claiming  that  it  is  a  moral 
disaster  to  do  so.  It  is  a  difference  in  the 
gradations  of  respect  worth  noting,  but  noth- 
ing more.  I  have  even  seen  kissing,  as  a  couple 
walked  up  the  stairs  from  one  part  of  the  theatre 
to  another.  In  the  spring  and  summer  the  paths 
of  the  Tiergarten  of  a  morning  are  strewn  with 
hair-pins,  a  curious,  but  none  the  less  accurate, 
indication  of  the  rather  fumbling  affection  of  the 
night  before. 

To  live  in  a  fashionable  hotel,  in  a  land  whose 
people  you  wish  to  study,  is  as  valueless  an  ex- 
perience as  to  go  to  a  zoological  garden  to  learn 
to  track  a  mountain  sheep  or  to  ride  down  a  wild 
boar.  You  must  go  about  among  the  people 


226     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

themselves,  to  their  restaurants,  to  their  houses, 
if  they  are  good  enough  to  ask  you,  and  to  the 
resorts  of  all  kinds  that  they  frequent. 

The  manners  are  better  than  in  my  student 
days,  but  there  is  still  a  deal  of  improvised  eating 
and  drinking.  There  is  much  tucking  of  nap- 
kins under  chins  that  the  person  may  be  shielded 
from  misdirected  food-offerings.  There  is  not  a 
little  use  of  the  knife  where  the  fork  or  spoon  is 
called  for;  but  this  last  I  always  look  upon  as  a 
remnant  of  courage,  of  the  virility  remaining  in 
the  race  from  a  not  distant  time  when  the  knife 
served  to  clear  the  forest,  to  build  the  hut,  to  kill 
the  deer,  and  to  defend  the  family  from  the  wolf; 
and  the  traditions  of  such  a  weapon  still  give  it 
predominance  over  the  more  epicene  fork,  as  a 
link  with  a  stirring  past.  Mere  daintiness  in 
feeding  is  characteristic  of  the  lapdog  and  other 
over-protected  animals.  Unthinking  courage  in 
the  matter  of  victuals  is  rather  a  relief  from 
the  strained  and  anxious  hygienic  watchfulness 
of  the  overcivilized  and  the  overrich.  The 
body  should  be,  and  is,  regarded  by  who  esome- 
minde4  people,  not  as  an  idol,  but  as  an  in- 
strument. The  German  no  doubt  sees  some- 
thing ignominious  in  counting  as  one  cliews  a 
chop,  in  the  careful  measuring  of  one's  liquids, 
in  the  restricting  of  oneself  to  the  diet  of  the 


BERLIN  227 

squirrel  and  the  cow.  He  would  perhaps  prefer 
to  lose  a  year  or  two  of  life  rather  than  to  nut 
and  spinach  himself  to  longevity.  The  whole- 
some body  ought  of  course  to  be  unerring  and 
automatic  in  its  choice  of  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  its  fuel. 

A  well-dressed  man  in  Berlin  is  almost  as  con- 
spicuous as  a  dancing  bear.  This  comparison 
may  lead  the  stranger  to  infer,  in  spite  of  what 
has  been  said  of  the  orderliness  of  Berlin,  that 
dancing  bears  are  permitted  in  the  streets.  It  is 
only  fair  to  Berlin's  admirable  police  president, 
von  Jagow,  to  say  that  they  are  not. 

'  If  one  leaves  the  officers,  who  are  a  fine,  up- 
standing, well-groomed  lot,  out  of  the*  account, 
the  inhabitants  of  Berlin  are  almost  grotesque  in 
their  dowdiness.  This  is  the  more  remarkable 
for  the  reason  that  the  citizens  of  Berlin,  wher- 
ever you  see  them,  not  only  in  the  West-end,  but 
in  the  tenement  districts,  in  the  public  markets, 
going  to  or  coming  from  the  suburban  trains,  in 
the  trams  and  underground  railway,  in  the 
cheaper  restaurants  and  pleasure  resorts,  taking 
their  Sunday  outing,  or  in  the  fourth-class  car- 
riages of  the  railway  trains,  or  their  children  in 
the  schools,  show  a  high  level  of  comfort  in  their 
clothing.  There  is  poverty  and  wretchedness  in 
Berlin,  of  which  later,  but  in  no  great  city  even 


228     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

in  America,  does  the  mass  of  the  people  give  such 
an  air  of  being  comfortably  clothed  and  fed. 

We  have  been  deluged  of  late  years  with  figures 
in  regard  to  the  cost  of  living  in  this  country  and 
in  that,  and  never  are  statistics  such  "damned 
lies"  as  in  this  connection.  There  is  better  and 
cheaper  food  in  Berlin,  and  in  the  other  cities  of 
Germany,  than  anywhere  else  in  our  white  man's 
world.  Having  for  the  moment  no  free-trade,  or 
protectionist,  or  tariff-reform  axe  to  grind,  and 
having  tested  the  pudding  not  by  my  prejudices 
but  my  palate,  and  having  eaten  a  fifteen-pfen- 
nig luncheon  in  the  street,  and  climbed  step  by 
step  the  gastronomical  stairway  in  Germany  all 
the  way  up  to  a  supper  at  the  court,  where  eight 
hundred  odd  people  were  served  with  a  care  and 
celerity,  and  with  hot  viands  and  irreproachable 
potables,  that  made  one  think  of  the  "  Arabian 
Nights,"  I  offer  my  experience  and  my  opinion 
with  some  confidence.  You  can  get  enough  to 
stave  off  hunger  for  a  few  pfennigs,  you  can  get  a 
meal  for  something  under  twenty -five  cents,  and 
the  whole  twenty-five  cents  will  include  a  glass 
of  the  best  beer  in  the  world  outside  of  Munich. 
If  you  care  to  spend  fifty  cents  there  are  countless 
restaurants  where  you  can  have  a  square  meal 
and  a  glass  of  beer  for  that  price ;  and  for  a  dollar 

I  will  give  you  as  good  a  luncheon  with  wine  as 

" 


BERLIN  229 

any  man  with  undamaged  taste  and  unspoiled 
digestion  ought  to  have. 

There  is  one  restaurant  in  Berlin  which  feeds 
as  many  as  five  thousand  people  on  a  Sunday, 
where  you  can  dine  or  sup,  and  listen  to  good 
music,  and  enjoy  your  beer  and  tobacco  for  an 
hour  afterward,  and  all  for  something  under  fifty 
cents  if  you  are  careful  in  your  ordering.  During 
my  walks  in  the  country  around  Berlin,  I  have 
often  had  an  omelette  followed  by  meat  and 
vegetables,  and  cheese,  and  compote,  and  Rhine 
wine,  with  all  the  bread  I  wanted,  and  paid  a  bill 
for  two  persons  of  a  little  over  a  dollar.  The 
Brodchen,  or  rolls,  seem  to  be  everywhere  of  uni- 
form size  and  quality,  and  the  butter  always 
good. 

Paris  is  fast  losing  its  place  as  the  home  of 
good  all-round  eating  as  compared  with  Berlin. 
Of  course,  New  York  for  geographical  reasons, 
and  also  because  the  modern  Maecenas  lives 
there,  is  nowadays  the  place  where  Lucullus 
would  invite  his  emperor  to  dine  if  he  came  back 
to  earth;  but  I  am  not  discussing  the  nectar  and 
ambrosia  classes,  but  the  beer,  bread,  and  pork 
classes,  and  certainly  Berlin  has  no  rival  as  a 
provider  for  them. 

After  all  our  study  of  statistics,  of  figures,  of 
contrasts,  I  am  not  sure  that  we  arrive  at  any 


230     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

very  valuable  conclusions.  American  working- 
classes  work  ever  shorter  hours,  gain  higher 
wages,  but  they  are  indubitably  less  happy,  less 
rich  in  experience,  less  serene  than  the  Germans. 
This  measuring  things  by  dollars,  by  hours,  by 
pounds  and  yard-sticks,  measures  everything  ac- 
curately enough  except  the  one  thing  we  wish  to 
measure,  which  is  a  man's  soul.  We  are  pro- 
ducing the  material  things  of  life  faster,  more 
cheaply,  more  shoddily,  but  it  is  open  to  ques- 
tion whether  we  are  producing  happier  men  and 
women,  and  that  is  what  we  are  striving  to  do 
as  the  end  of  it  all.  Nothing  is  of  any  value  in 
the  world  that  cannot  be  translated  into  the  terms 
of  man-making,  or  its  value  measured  by  what 
it  does  to  produce  a  man,  a  woman,  and  children 
living  happily  together.  Wealth  does  not  do 
this;  indeed,  wealth  beyond  a  certain  limit  is 
almost  certain  to  destroy  the  foundation  of  all 
peace,  a  contented  family. 

A  shady  beer-garden,  capital  music,  and  happy 
fathers  and  mothers  and  children,  what  arith- 
metic, or  algebra,  or  census  tells  you  anything  of 
that?  The  infallible  recipe  for  making  a  child 
unhappy,  is  to  give  it  everything  it  cries  for  of 
material  things,  and  never  to  thwart  its  will. 
We  throw  wages  and  shorter  hours  of  work  at 
people,  but  that  is  only  turning  them  out  of  prison 


BERLIN  231 

into  a  desert.  No  statistics  can  deal  compe- 
tently with  the  comparative  well-being  of  nations, 
and  nothing  is  more  ludicrous  than  the  results 
arrived  at  where  Germany  is  discussed  by  the 
British  or  American  politician.  Whatever  fig- 
ures say,  and  whatever  else  they  may  lack,  they 
are  better  clothed,  better  fed  and  cared  for,  and 
have  far  more  opportunities  for  rational  enjoy- 
ment, and  a  thousand-fold  more  for  aesthetic  en- 
joyment, than  either  the  English  or  the  Ameri- 
cans. That  they  lack  freedom,  in  our  sense,  is 
true,  but  freedom  is  for  the  few.  The  world- 
wide complaint  of  the  hardship  of  constant  work 
is  rather  silly,  for  most  of  us  would  die  of  mo- 
notony if  we  were  not  forced  to  work  to  keep 
alive,  and  to  make  a  living. 

The  city,  with  its  broad,  clean  streets,  its  beau- 
tiful race-course,  shaded  walks,  its  forests  and 
lakes,  toward  Potsdam,  or  at  Tegel,  or  Werder, 
when  the  blossoms  are  out,  with  its  well-kept 
gardens,  its  profusion  of  flowers  and  shrubs  and 
trees,  is  physically  the  most  wholesome  great 
city  in  the  world;  but  Hans  bleibt  immer  Hans! 
Goethe,  after  a  visit  to  Berlin,  wrote:  "There  are 
no  more  ungodly  communities  than  in  Berlin."1 

No  one  knows  his  Berlin  better  than  that 
prince  of  German  literary  Bohemians,  Paul  Lin- 

1  "  Es  giebt  keine  gottlosere  Volker  als  in  Berlin." 


232     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

dau,  and  he  makes  a  character  in  one  of  his 
novels  say  of  it:  "untidy  and  orderly,  so  boister- 
ous and  so  regulated,  so  boorish  and  so  kindly, 
so  indescribable — so  Berlinish — just  that!"  l 

In  another  place  the  same  author  writes:  "Ber- 
lin as  the  Capital  of  the  German  Empire!  There 
are  many  respects  in  which  it  nevertheless  hasn't 
yet  succeeded  in  taking  on  the  character  of  a  cos- 
mopolitan city." 2  Not  even  literature  finds 
material  for  a  city  novel.  There  is  no  Balzac, 
no  Thackeray.  Germany  is  still  dominated  by 
the  village  and  the  town.  Goethe,  Auerbach, 
Spielhagen,  Heyse,  Gottfried  Keller,  Freytag, 
my  unread  favorite  "Fritz"  Reuter,  deal  not 
with  the  life  of  cities.  There  is  as  yet  no  drama, 
no  novel,  no  art,  no  politics  born  of  the  city. 
There  is  no  domineering  Paris  or  London  or 
New  York  as  yet. 

After  some  years  of  acquaintance  with  Ger- 
many as  school-boy,  as  student  at  the  universi- 
ties, and  lately  as  a  most  hospitably  received 
guest  by  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  I  do  not 
remember  meeting  a  fop.  A  German  Beau 
Brummel  is  as  impossible  as  a  French  Luther, 

1  "Staubig  und  ordentlich,  so  laut  und  geregelt,  so  grob  und  gemtlt- 
lich,  so  unbeschreiblich,  so  berlinerisch,  gerade  so!" 

2  "Berlin  als  Hauptstadt  des  deutschen  Reiches:    in  mancher  Bezie- 
hung  hatte  es  sich  dem  weltstadtischen  Charakter  doch  noch  nicht 
aneignen  konnen." 


BERLIN  233 

an  American  Goethe,  or  an  English  Wagner. 
We  have  had  attempts  at  foppery  in  America, 
but  no  real  fops.  A  genuine  fop,  whether  in  art, 
in  literature,  or  in  costumes,  must  have  brains, 
ours  have  been  merely  effigies,  foppery  taking 
the  dull  commercial  form  of  a  great  variety  of  rai- 
ment. It  is  a  strange  contradiction  in  German 
life  that  while  they  are  as  a  people  governed 
minutely  and  in  detail,  forbidden  personal  free- 
dom along  certain  lines  to  which  we  should  find 
it  hard  to  submit,  they  are  freer  morally,  freer 
in  their  literature,  their  art,  their  music,  their 
social  life,  and  in  their  unself -conscious  expression 
of  them  than  other  people.  There  is  a  curious 
combination  of  legal  and  governmental  slavery, 
and  of  spiritual  and  intellectual  freedom;  of  in- 
numerable restrictions,  and  great  liberty  of  per- 
sonal enjoyment,  and  that  enjoyment  of  the 
most  nai'f  kind.  They  seem  to  have  done  less 
to  destroy  life's  palate  with  the  condiments  of 
civilization,  and  therefore,  still  find  plain  things 
savorous. 

I  am  not  sure  that  the  ecumenical  sophistica- 
tion, known  as  world-etiquette,  marks  a  very  high 
degree  of  knowledge  or  usefulness  anywhere. 
To  know  which  hat  goes  with  which  boots,  and 
what  collar  and  tie  with  what  coat  and  waistcoat, 
and  what  costume  is  appropriate  at  10  A.  M., 


234     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  what  at  10  p.  M.,  and  to  know  the  names  of 
the  head-waiters  of  the  principal  restaurants, 
are  minor  matters.  These  are  the  conveniences 
of  the  gentleman,  but  the  characteristic  bur- 
dens of  the  ass.  Such  a  mental  equipment  is 
not  the  stuff  of  which  soldiers,  sailors,  states- 
men, explorers,  or  governors  are  made. 

We  must  not  overrate  the  value  of  this  femi- 
nine worldliness  in  judging  the  Germans.  This 
effeminate  categorical  imperative  of  etiquette  has 
not  influenced  them  greatly  as  yet.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  one  must  claim  for  the  amenities  of 
life  that  they  have  their  value,  that  they  are,  after 
all,  the  external  decorations  of  an  inward  disci- 
pline. It  is  not  necessarily  a  fine  disdain  of  mate- 
rial things,  but  rather  a  keen  sense  of  moral  and 
physical  efficiency,  which  pays  due  heed  to  where- 
withal ye  shall  be  clothed,  at  any  rate  outside  of 
Palestine.  Those  who  dream  and  discuss  may 
wear  anything  or  nothing.  It  mattered  not  what 
Socrates  wore.  But  men  of  action  must  wear 
the  easy  armor  that  fits  them  best  for  their  par- 
ticular task.  Men  who  toil  either  at  their  pleas- 
ure or  at  their  work  must  change  their  raiment, 
if  only  for  the  sake  of  rest  and  health.  Now  that 
government  is  in  the  hands  of  the  vociferators 
rather  than  the  meditaters,  even  politicians  must 
look  to  their  costumes,  merely  out  of  regard  to 


BERLIN  235 

cleanliness.  Evening  clothes  with  a  knitted  tie 
dribbling  down  the  shirt  front;  a  frock-coat  as  a 
frame  for  a  colored  waistcoat,  such  as  at  shoot- 
ing, or  riding,  or  golf,  we  permit  ourselves  to 
break  forth  in,  as  a  weak  surrender  to  the  tailor, 
or  to  the  ingenuity  of  our  womenfolk  who  are 
not  "unbred  to  spinning,  in  the  loom  unskilled"; 
the  extraordinary  indulgence  in  personal  fancies 
in  the  choice  of  colored  ties,  as  though  the  male 
citizens  of  Berlin  had  been  to  an  auction  of  the 
bastards  of  a  rainbow;  the  little  melon-shaped 
hats  with  a  band  of  thick  velvet  around  them; 
the  awkward  slouching  gait,  as  of  men  physically 
untrained;  the  enormous  proportion  of  men  over 
forty,  who  follow  behind  their  stomachs  and 
turn  their  toes  out  at  an  angle  of  more  than 
forty-five  degrees,  whose  necks  lie  in  folds  over 
their  collars,  and  whose  whole  appearance  de- 
notes an  uncared-for  person  and  a  negligence  of 
domestic  hygiene:  these  things  are  significant. 
No  man  who  walks  with  his  toes  pointing  south- 
west by  south,  and  southeast  by  south,  when  he  is 
going  south,  will  ever  get  into  France  on  his 
own  feet,  carrying  a  knapsack  and  a  rifle.  Cra- 
nach's  painting  of  Duke  Henry  the  Pious,  in  the 
Dresden  Gallery,  gives  an  accurate  picture  of  the 
way  many  Germans  still  stand  and  walk;  while 
every  athlete  knows  that  runners  and  walkers  put 


236     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

their  feet  down  straight,  or  with  a  tendency  to 
turn  them  in  rather  than  out.  The  Indians  of 
northwest  India,  and  the  Indians  of  our  own  West 
are  good  examples  of  this. 

•It  is  evident  that  the  orderliness  of  Berlin  is 
enforced  orderliness  and  not  voluntary  orderli- 
ness. Both  pedestrians  and  drivers  of  all  sorts  of 
vehicles,  take  all  that  is  theirs  and  as  much  more 
as  possible.  There  is  none  of  the  give  and  take, 
and  innate  love  of  fair  play  and  instinctive  wish 
to  give  the  other  fellow  a  chance,  so  noticeable 
in  London  streets,  whether  on  the  sidewalks  or 
in  the  roadway.  There  is  a  general  chip-on-the- 
shoulder  attitude  in  Prussia,  which  may  be  said, 
I  think  not  unfairly,  to  be  evident  in  all  ranks, 
from  their  recent  foreign  diplomacy,  down  to  the 
pedestrians  and  drivers. 

Many  people  whom  I  have  met,  not  only  for- 
eigners but  Germans  from  other  parts  of  Ger- 
many, are  loud  in  their  denunciations  of  the  Ber- 
liners.  "Freeh"  and  "roh"  are  adjectives  often 
used  about  them.  There  is  a  surly  malice  of 
speech  and  manner  among  the  working  classes, 
that  seems  to  indicate  a  wish  to  atone  for  po- 
litical impotence,  by  braggart  impudence  to 
those  whom  they  regard  as  superior.  When 
we  played  horse  as  children,  we  champed  the 
wooden  bit,  shied,  and  balked  and  kicked,  and 


BERLIN  237 

the  worse  we  behaved  the  more  spirited  horses 
we  thought  ourselves.  There  is  a  certain  social 
and  political  radicalism  verging  upon  anarchy, 
which  plays  at  life  in  much  the  same  way,  with 
no  better  reason,  and  with  little  better  result. 
Shying,  balking,  and  kicking,  and  champing  the 
political  bit,  are  only  spirited  to  the  childish. 

Their  awkward  and  annoying  attentions  to 
women  alone  on  the  streets;  their  staring  and 
gaping;  their  rudeness  in  pushing  and  shoving; 
the  general  underbred  look,  the  slouching  gait, 
the  country-store  clothes,  hats,  and  boots;  the 
fearful  and  wonderful  combinations  of  raiment; 
the  sweetbread  complexions,  as  of  men  under- 
exercised  and  not  sufficiently  aired  and  scrubbed ; 
their  stiff  courtesy  to  one  another  when  they 
recognize  acquaintances  with  hat-sweeping  bows; 
their  fierce  gobbling  in  the  restaurants ;  their  lack 
of  small  services  and  attentions  to  their  own 
women  when  they  go  about  in  public  with  them ; 
their  selfish  disregard  of  others  in  public  places, 
their  giving  and  taking  of  hats,  coats,  sticks,  and 
umbrellas  at  the  garde-robes  of  the  theatres,  fpr 
example;  their  habit  of  straggling  about  in  the 
middle  of  the  streets,  like  the  chickens  and  geese 
on  a  country  road:  all  these  things  I  have  noted 
too,  but  I  must  admit  the  surprising  personal 
conclusion  that  I  have  grown  to  like  the  people. 


238    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

A  good  pair  of  shoulders  and  an  engaging  smile 
go  far  to  mitigate  these  nuisances.  It  makes  for 
good  sense  in  this  matter  of  criticism  always  to 
bear  in  mind  that  delicious  piece  of  humor  of 
the  psalmist:  "Let  the  righteous  rather  smite  me 
friendly;  and  reprove  me.  But  let  not  their 
precious  balms  break  my  head."  The  "precious 
balms"  of  the  lofty  and  righteous  critic  are  not 
of  much  value  when  they  merely  break  heads. 

I  have  been  all  over  Berlin,  and  in  all  sorts  of 
places,  by  day  and  by  night.  I  have  found  my- 
self seated  beside  all  sorts  of  people  in  restau- 
rants and  public  places,  and  I  have  yet  to  chron- 
icle any  rudeness  to  me  or  mine.  I  like  their 
innocent  curiosity,  their  unsophisticated  ways, 
their  bumpkin  love-making  in  public;  and  many 
a  time  I  have  found  entertainment  from  odd 
companions  who  seated  themselves  near  me, 
when  I  have  strayed  into  the  cheaper  restau- 
rants, to  hear  and  to  see  something  of  the  Ber- 
liner in  his  native  wilds.  Their  malice  and  rude- 
ness and  apparent  impertinences  are  due  to  lack 
of  experience,  to  the  fact  that  their  manners  are 
still  untilled,  I  believe,  rather  than  to  intentional 
insult.  They  are  not  house-broken  to  their  new 
capital,  that  is  all,  and  that  will  come  in  time. 
Their  malicious  jealousy  peeps  out  in  all  sorts  of 
ways.  In  the  lower  house  of  the  Prussian  Diet, 


BERLIN  239 

recently,  a  member  protested  vigorously  against 
the  employment  of  an  American  singer  in  the 
Opera  House!  Chauvinism  carried  to  this  ex- 
treme becomes  comic,  and  is  noted  here  only  to 
indicate  to  what  depths  of  farm-yard  provin- 
ciality some  of  the  citizens  of  this  great  city  can 
descend. 

(They  are  dreamers  and  sentimentalists  too. 
There  are  more  kissing,  more  fondling,  more 
exuberance  of  affection,  more  displays  of  friend- 
liness in  Germany  in  a  week  than  in  England  and 
America  in  six  months.  I  confess  without  shame 
that  I  like  to  see  it,  and  when  it  comes  my  way, 
as  beyond  my  deserts  it  has,  I  like  to  feel  it. 
How  lasting  is  this  friendliness  I  have  no  means 
of  knowing  till  the  years  to  come  tell  me,  but 
that  it  is  a  pleasant  atmosphere  to  live  in  there 
can  be  no  doubt. 

The  driving  is  of  the  very  worst.  A  man  be- 
hind a  horse,  or  horses,  who  knows  even  the  ele- 
ments of  handling  the  reins  and  the  whip  and 
the  brake,  would  be  a  curiosity  indeed.  I  have 
not  seen  a  dozen  coachmen,  private  or  public, 
to  whom  my  youngest  child  could  not  have  given 
invaluable  suggestions  as  to  the  bitting,  har- 
nessing, and  handling  of  his  cattle.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  one  day  saw  a  street  sign  twisted  out  of 
its  place.  I  was  fascinated  by  this  unexampled 


240    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

mark  of  negligence.  I  determined  to  watch  that 
sign;  alas,  within  forty-eight  hours  it  was  put 
right  again. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  there  are  no  fine 
horses  to  be  seen  in  Berlin.  You  will  go  far  to 
find  a  better  lot  of  horse-flesh,  or  better-looking 
men  on  the  horses,  than  you  will  see  when  the 
Kaiser  rides  by  to  the  castle  after  his  morning 
exercise;  and  he  sits  his  horse  and  manages  him 
with  the  easy  skill  of  the  real  horseman,  and  looks 
every  inch  a  king  besides.  It  is  told  of  Daniel 
Webster,  walking  in  London,  that  a  navvy 
turned  to  his  companion  and  remarked:  "That 
bloke  must  be  a  king ! "  You  would  say  the  same 
of  the  Kaiser  if  you  saw  him  on  horseback. 

At  horse  shows  and  in  the  Tiergarten,  and  in 
riding-places  in  other  cities,  I  have  looked  at 
hundreds  of  horses,  and,  if  I  mistake  not,  Ger- 
many is  both  buying  and  breeding  the  very  best 
in  the  way  of  mounts,  though  their  civilian  riders 
are  often  of  the  scissors  variety.  There  are  com- 
paratively few  harness  horses,  and  in  Berlin 
scarcely  a  dozen  well-turned-out  private  car- 
riages, outside  the  imperial  equipages,  which  are 
always  superbly  horsed  and  beautifully  turned 
out;  so  my  eyes  tell  me  at  least,  and  I  have 
watched  the  streets  carefully  for  months.  The 
minor  details  of  a  properly  turned-out  carriage 


BERLIN  241 

(bits,  chains,  liveries,  saddle-cloths,  and  so  on) 
are  still  unknown  here.  I  have  had  the  privilege 
of  driving  and  riding  some  of  the  horses  in  the 
imperial  stables;  and  I  have  seen  all  of  them  at 
one  time  or  another  being  exercised  in  harness 
and  under  the  saddle.  I  have  never  driven  a 
better-mannered  four,  or  ridden  more  perfectly 
broken  saddle-horses.  There  are  three  hundred 
and  twenty-six  horses  in  his  Majesty's  stables, 
and  for  a  private  stable  of  its  size  it  has  no  equal 
in  the  world.  I  may  add,  too,  that  there  is 
probably  no  better  "whip"  in  the  world  to-day, 
whether  with  two  horses,  four  horses,  or  six 
horses,  than  the  gentleman  who  trains  the  har- 
ness horses  in  the  imperial  stables.  This  German 
coachman  would  be  a  revelation  at  a  horse  show 
in  either  New  York  or  London.  If  the  citizens 
of  Berlin  wrere  as  well-mannered  as  the  horses 
in  the  imperial  stables,  this  would  be  the  most 
elegant  capital  in  the  world.  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  his  Majesty's  very  accomplished 
master  of  the  horse  cannot  also  hold  the  position 
of  censor  morum  to  the  citizens  of  Berlin.  In- 
dividual prowess  in  the  details  of  cosmopolitan 
etiquette  has  not  reached  a  high  level,  but  in  all 
matters  of  mere  house-keeping  there  are  no  bet- 
ter municipal  housewives  than  these  German 
cities  and  towns. 


242    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

As  a  further  example,  the  statues  of  Berlin  are 
carefully  cleaned  in  the  spring,  but  what  statues ! 
With  the  exception  of  the  Lessing,  the  Goethe, 
and  the  Great  Elector  statues,  the  statue  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  the  reclining  statues 
of  the  late  emperor  and  empress,  by  Begas,  and 
one  or  two  others,  one  sees  at  once  that  these 
citizens  are  no  more  capable  of  ornamenting 
their  city  than  of  dressing  themselves. 

Poor  Bismarck!  Grotesque  figures  (men, 
women,  animals)  surround  the  base  of  his  statue 
in  Berlin,  in  Leipsic;  and  in  Hamburg,  clad  in 
a  corrugated  golf  costume,  with  a  colossal  two- 
handed  sword  in  front  of  him,  he  is  a  melancholy 
figure,  gazing  out  over  a  tumble-down  beer-gar- 
den. At  Wannsee,  near  Berlin,  there  is,  I  must 
admit,  a  really  fine  bust  of  Bismarck.  On  a 
solid  square  pedestal  of  granite,  covered  with 
ivy  and  surrounded  by  the  whispering,  or  sigh- 
ing, or  creaking  and  cracking  trees  that  he  loved, 
and  facing  the  setting  sun,  and  alone  in  a  se- 
cluded corner,  just  the  place  he  would  have 
chosen,  there  are  the  head  and  shoulders  of  the 
real  Bismarck.  Here  for  once  he  has  escaped  the 
fussy  attentions  of  the  artistry  that  he  detested. 
Lehnbach,  who  painted  Bismarck  so  many 'scores 
of  times,  never  gave  him  the  color  that  his  face 
kept  all  through  life,  and  with  the  exception  of 


BERLIN  243 

this  bust,  of  the  scores  of  Bismarck  memorials 
one  sees  all  commiserate  the  lack  of  artist 
ability;  they  do  not  commemorate  Bismarck. 
If  this  is  what  they  do  to  the  greatest  man  in 
their  history,  what  is  to  be  expected  elsewhere? 
What  has  poor  Joachim  Friedrich  done  that  he 
should  pose  forever  in  the  Sieges  Alice  as  an  in- 
toxicated hitching-post?  What,  indeed,  have 
his  companions  done  that  they  should  stand  in 
two  rows  there,  studies  in  contortion,  with  a 
gilded  Russian  dancer  with  wings  at  one  end  of 
their  line,  and  a  woodeny  Roland  at  the  other? 
But  there  they  are,  simpering  a  paltry  patriot- 
ism, insipid  as  history  and  ridiculous  as  art. 
What  has  become  of  Lessing,  and  Winckelmann, 
and  Goethe,  and  their  teachings?  Is  this  the 
price  that  a  nation  must  pay  for  its  industrial 
progress? 

The  German,  with  all  his  boasting  about  the 
"centre  of  culture,"  has  not  discovered  that  the 
beauty  of  antiquity  is  the  expression  of  those  vir- 
tues which  were  useful  at  the  time  of  Theseus, 
as  Stendhal  rightly  tells  us.  Individual  force, 
which  was  everything  of  old,  amounts  to  almost 
nothing  in  our  modern  civilization.  The  monk 
who  invented  gunpowder  modified  sculpture; 
strength  is  only  necessary  now  among  subalterns. 
No  one  thinks  of  asking  whether  Frederick  the 


244    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Great  and  Napoleon  were  good  swordsmen.  The 
strength  we  admire,  is  the  strength  of  Napoleon 
advancing  alone  upon  the  First  Battalion  of  the 
royal  troops  near  Lake  Loffrey  in  March,  1815; 
that  is  strength  of  soul.  The  moral  qualities 
with  which  we  are  concerned  are  no  longer  the 
same  as  in  the  days  of  the  Greeks.  Before  this 
cockney  sculpture  was  planned,  there  should 
have  been  a  closer  study  of  the  history  and  phi- 
losophy of  art  in  Berlin. 

It  is  true  that  we  in  America  are  living  in  a 
glass  house  to  some  extent  in  these  matters,  but 
where  in  all  Germany  is  there  any  modern 
sculpture  to  compare  with  our  Nathan  Hale,  our 
Minute  Man,  and  that  most  spirited  bit  of  mod- 
ern plastic  art  in  all  the  world,  the  Shaw  Monu- 
ment in  Boston?  You  cannot  stand  in  front  of 
it  without  keeping  time,  and  here  lips  of  bronze 
sing  the  song  of  patriotism  till  your  heart 
thumps,  and  you  are  ready  to  throw  up  your  hat 
as  the  splendid  young  figure  and  his  negro  sol- 
diers march  by  —  and  they  do  march  by !  It  is 
almost  a  consolation  for  what  Boston  has  done  to 
that  gallant  soldier  and  humble  servant  of  God, 
that  modest  gentleman,  Phillips  Brooks.  In  a 
statue  to  him  they  have  travestied  the  virtues  he 
expounded,  slain  the  ideal  of  the  Christ  he 
preached,  theatricalized  the  least  theatrical  of 


BERLIN  245 

men,  and  placed  this  piece  of  mortifying  mis- 
understanding in  bronze  under  the  very  eaves  of 
the  house  that  grew  out  of  his  simple  eloquence. 
There  is  in  Leipsic  a  similar  misdemeanor  in  a 
statue  of  Beethoven.  He  sits,  naked  to  the  waist, 
in  a  bronze  chair,  with  a  sort  of  bath-towel 
drapery  of  colored  marble  about  his  legs,  and  an 
eagle  in  front  of  him.  He  has  a  chauffeurish  ex- 
pression of  anxious  futility,  as  though  he  were 
about  to  run  over  the  eagle. 

Men  are  without  great  dreams  in  these  days, 
and  art  is  elaborate  and  fussy  and  self-conscious. 
The  technical  part  of  the  work  is  predominant. 
One  sees  the  artist  holding  up  a  mirror  to  him- 
self as  he  works.  Pygmalion  congratulates  the 
statue  upon  the  fact  that  he  carved  it,  instead  of 
being  lost  in  the  love  of  creating.  It  is  as  though 
a  lover  should  sing  of  himself  instead  of  singing  of 
his  lady.  The  subtle  poison  of  self-advertisement 
has  crept  in,  and  peers  like  a  satyr  from  the  pict- 
ure and  from  the  statue.  Even  the  most  prom- 
inent name  in  German  music  at  this  writing  is 
that  of  a  man  who  is  notorious  as  an  expert  sales- 
man of  symphonic  sensationalism. 

/Though  the  streets  are  so  well  kept,  the  build- 
ings in  these  miles  of  new  streets  are  flimsy-look- 
ing, and  evidently  the  work  of  the  speculative 
builder.  The  more  pretentious  buildings  ape  a 


246     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

kind  of  Nuremberg  Renaissance  style,  and  are  as 
effective  as  a  castle  made  of  cardboard.  This 
does  not  imply  that  there  are  not  simple  and 
solid  buildings  in  Berlin  and,  in  the  case  of  the 
new  library  and  a  score  of  other  buildings,  wor- 
thy architecture;  but  the  general  impression  is 
one  of  haste  multiplied  by  plaster. 

The  whole  city  blossoms  with  statuary,  like  a 
cosmopolitan  'Arriet  who  cannot  get  enough 
flowers  and  feathers  on  her  Sunday  hat.  A  cer- 
tain comic  anthropomorphism  is  to  be  seen,  even 
on  the  balustrades  of  the  castle,  where  the  good 
Emperor  William  is  posed  as  Jupiter,  the  Em- 
press Augusta  as  Juno,  Emperor  Frederick  as 
Mars,  and  his  wife  as  Minerva !  On  the  f agades 
of  houses,  on  the  bridges,  on  the  roofs  of  apart- 
ment houses,  on  the  hotels  even,  and  scattered 
throughout  the  public  gardens,  are  scores  of 
statues,  and  they  are  for  the  most  part  what 
hastily  ordered,  swiftly  completed  art,  born  of 
the  dollar  instead  of  the  pain  and  travail  of  love 
and  imagination,  must  always  be. 

A  certain  literary  snob  taken  to  task  by  Doc- 
tor Parr  for  pronouncing  the  one-time  capital  of 
Egypt  "Alexandria,"  with  the  accent  on  the 
long  i,  quoted  the  authority  of  Doctor  Bentley. 
"Doctor  Bentley  and  I,"  replied  Doctor  Parr, 
"may  call  it  'Alexandria,'  but  I  should  advise 


BERLIN  247 

you  to  call  it  'Alexandria.' '  It  was  all  very  well 
for  the  Medici,  to  ornament  their  cities  and  their 
homes  with  the  fruit  of  the  great  artistic  spring- 
time of  the  world,  but  I  should  strongly  advise 
the  Berliners  to  pronounce  it  "Alexandria"  for 
some  years  to  come.  No  matter  how  fervid  the 
lover,  nor  how  possessed  he  may  be  by  his  mis- 
tress, he  cannot  turn  out  every  day,  even, 

"A  halting  sonnet  of  his  own  poor  brain, 
Fashion'd  to  Beatrice." 

All  this  pretentious  over-ornamentation  is  cos- 
meticism,  the  powder  and  paint  of  the  vulgarian 
striving  to  conceal  by  a  futile  advertisement  her 
lack  of  refinement.  Paris  was  teaching  the 
world  when  there  was  no  capital  in  Germany; 
London  has  been  a  commercial  centre  for  a 
thousand  years,  and  Oxford  was  a  hundred  years 
old  before  even  the  University  of  Prague,  the 
first  in  Germany,  was  founded  by  Charles  IV  in 
1348.  You  may  like  or  dislike  these  cities,  but, 
at  any  rate,  they  have  a  bouquet;  Berlin  has 
none. 

When  Germany  deals  with  the  inanimate  and 
amenable  factors  of  life,  she  brings  the  machinery 
of  modern  civilization  well-nigh  to  the  point  of 
perfection.  As  a  municipal  and  national  house- 
wife she  has  no  equal,  none.  But  art  has  noth- 


248     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  to  do  with  brooms  and  dust-pans,  and 
human  nature  is  woven  of  surprises  and  emer- 
gencies, and  what  then?  An  interesting  example 
in  the  streets  of  Berlin  is  the  difference  between 
the  perfection  of  the  street-cleaning,  which  deals 
with  the  inanimate  and  with  accurately  cal- 
culable factors,  and  the  governing  of  the  street 
traffic.  Horses  and  men  and  motor-driven  ve- 
hicles are  not  as  dependable  as  blocks  of  pave- 
ment. When  the  traffic  in  the  Berlin  streets 
grows  to  the  proportions  of  London,  Paris,  and 
New  York,  one  wonders  what  will  happen.  No- 
where are  there  such  broad,  well-kept  streets  in 
which  the  traffic  is  so  awkwardly  handled. 

sThe  police  are  all,  and  must  be,  indeed,  non- 
commissioned officers  of  the  army,  of  nine  years' 
service,  and  not  over  thirty-five  years  of  age. 
They  are  armed  with  swords  and  pistols  by  night, 
and  in  the  rougher  parts  of  the  town  with  the 
same  weapons  by  day  as  well.  After  ten  years' 
service  they  are  entitled  to  a  pension  of  twenty- 
sixtieths  of  their  pay,  with  an  increase  of  one- 
sixtieth  for  each  further  year  of  service.  They 
are  not  under  the  city,  but  under  state  control, 
and  the  chief  of  police  is  a  man  of  distinction, 
nearly  always  a  nobleman,  and  nominated  by, 
and  in  every  case  approved  by,  the  Emperor. 
In  Berlin  he  is  appointed  by  the  King  of  Prussia. 


BERLIN  249 

He  is  a  man  of  such  standing  that  he  may  be 
promoted  to  cabinet  rank.  The  men  are  well- 
turned  out,  of  heavy  build,  very  courteous  to 
strangers,  so  far  as  my  experience  can  speak  for 
them,  and  quiet  and  self -controlled.  Under  the 
police  president  are  one  colonel  of  police,  re- 
ceiving from  6,000  to  8,500  marks,  according  to 
his  length  of  service;  3  majors,  receiving  from 
5,400  to  6,600  marks;  20  captains,  receiving  from 
4,200  to  5,400  marks;  156  lieutenants,  receiving 
from  3,000  to  4,500  marks;  450  sergeants,  re- 
ceiving from  1,650  to  2,300  marks;  and  5,382 
patrolmen,  receiving  from  1,400  to  2,100  marks. 
There  are  also  some  300  mounted  police,  re- 
ceiving from  1,400  to  2,600  marks.  The  colonel, 
majors,  and  captains  receive  1,300  marks  addi- 
tional, and  the  lieutenants  800  marks  additional, 
for  house  rent.  The  mounted  police  are  well- 
horsed,  but  it  is  no  slight  to  them  to  say,  how- 
ever, that  their  horses  are  not  so  well  trained 
and  well  mannered,  nor  the  men  such  skilful 
horsemen,  as  those  of  our  mounted  squad  in  New 
York,  who,  man  for  man  and  horse  for  horse,  are 
probably  unequalled  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 
The  demand  for  these  non-commissioned  offi- 
cers of  nine  years  of  army  discipline,  who  cannot 
be  called  upon  to  serve  in  the  army  again,  has 
grown  with  the  growth  of  the  great  city,  with  its 


250    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

need  of  porters,  watchmen,  and  the  like,  and  so 
valuable  are  their  services  deemed  that  the  pres- 
ent police  force  of  Berlin  is  short  of  its  proper 
number  by  some  seven  hundred  men. 

The  examination  of  those  about  to  become 
policemen  extends  over  four  weeks,  and  includes 
every  detail  of  the  multiplicity  of  duties,  which 
ranges  from  the  protection  of  the  public  from 
crime,  down  to  tracking  down  truants  from 
school,  and  the  regulation  of  the  books  of  the 
maid-servant  class.  The  policeman  who  aspires 
to  the  rank  of  sergeant  undergoes  a  still  more 
rigorous  examination,  extending  over  twenty 
weeks  of  preparation,  during  which  time  he 
studies  —  note  this  list,  ye  "young  barbarians  all 
at  play,"  German,  rhetoric,  writing,  arithmetic, 
common  fractions,  geography,  history,  especially 
the  history  of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern  from 
the  time  of  the  margraves  to  the  present  time  (!), 
political  divisions  of  the  earth,  especially  of 
Prussia  and  Germany,  the  essential  features  of 
the  constitution  of  the  Prussian  Kingdom  and 
German  Empire,  the  organization  and  working  of 
the  various  state  authorities  in  Prussia  and  Ger- 
many, elementary  methods  of  disinfection,  com- 
mon veterinary  remedies,  the  police  law  as  ap- 
plicable to  innumerable  matters  from  the  treat- 
ment of  the  drunk,  blind,  and  lame,  to  evidences 


BERLIN  251 

of  murder,  and  the  press  law.  The  man  who 
passes  such  an  examination  would  be  more  than 
qualified  to  take  a  degree,  at  one  of  our  minor 
colleges,  if  he  knew  English  and  the  classics 
were  not  required,  and  could  well  afford  to  sniff 
disdainfully  at  the  pelting  shower  of  honorary 
degrees  of  Doctor  of  Divinity,  which  descend 
from  the  commencement  platforms  of  our  more 
girlish  intellectual  factories  of  orthodoxy. 

The  cost  of  the  police  in  Berlin  in  1880  was 
2,494,722  marks;  in  1890,  3,007,879  marks;  in 
1900,  6,065,975  marks;  and  in  1910,  8,708,165 
marks. 

I  fancy  that  after  an  accident  has  taken  place 
the  literary,  legal,  and  hygienic  details  are  cared 
for  by  the  Berlin  police  as  nowhere  else.  In  their 
management  of  the  traffic  they  are  distinctly 
lacking  in  decision  and  watchfulness.  On  the 
western  side  of  the  Brandenburger  Tor  there  is 
seldom  an  hour,  without  a  tangle  of  traffic  which 
is  entirely  unnecessary  if  the  police  knew  their 
business.  On  the  Tiergarten  Strasse,  a  rather 
narrow  and  much  used  thoroughfare  in  the  fash- 
ionable part  of  the  town,  trucks,  cabs,  and  other 
vehicles  are  not  kept  close  to  the  curbs,  often 
they  drive  along  in  pairs,  slowing  up  all  the 
traffic,  and  at  the  east  end  of  the  street  is  a  cor- 
ner which  could  easily  be  remedied  by  the  build- 


252    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  of  a  "refuge,"  and  an  authoritative  police- 
man to  guard  the  three  approaches.  Not  once, 
but  scores  of  times,  at  the  very  important  corner 
of  Unter  den  Linden  and  Wilhelm  Strasse  I  have 
seen  the  policeman  talking  to  friends  on  the  curb, 
quite  oblivious  to  a  scramble  of  cabs,  wagons, 
and  motors  at  cross  purposes  in  the  street.  Pots- 
darner  Platz  presents  a  difficult  problem  at  all 
times  of  the  day,  especially  when  the  crowds  are 
coming  from  or  going  toward  home,  but  a  few 
ropes  and  iron  standards,  and  four  alert  Irish 
policemen,  would  make  it  far  plainer  sailing  than 
now  it  is.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  the 
traffic  is  a  mere  dribble  as  compared  to  a  tor- 
rent, when  one  remembers  Paris,  New  York,  and 
London.  In  1909  the  street  accidents  in  Paris 
numbered  65,870,  and  there  was  one  summons 
for  every  77  motor  taxicabs,  but  Paris  is  now 
without  a  rival  as  the  dirtiest,  worst-paved  cap- 
ital in  Europe,  and  the  home  of  social  anarchy; 
a  place  where  adventurous  spirits  will  go  soon 
rather  than  to  Africa,  or  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, for  excitement  in  affrays  with  revolvers, 
vitriol,  and  chloroform. 

In  London,  in  1909,  there  were  13,388  acci- 
dents. In  Berlin  there  was  a  total  of  4,895  ac- 
cidents in  1900;  4,797  in  1905;  and  4,233  in  1910. 
One  hundred  persons  were  killed  in  1900;  115  in 


BERLIN  253 

1905;  and  136  in  1910.  In  this  connection  it  is 
to  be  said,  that  Berlin  has  fewer  and  much  less 
adventurous  inhabitants,  very  much  less  com- 
plicated traffic,  much  broader  and  better  streets, 
and  far  fewer  problems  than  the  older  cities.  If 
the  citizens  of  Berlin  were  anything  like  as  capa- 
ble of  taking  care  of  themselves  in  the  streets,  as 
they  should  be,  there  would  be  hardly  any  acci- 
dents at  all.  The  new  police  regulation  of  the 
traffic  has  been  only  some  four  or  five  years  in 
existence  in  its  more  rigid  form,  and  perhaps 
neither  people  nor  police  are  accustomed  to  it. 
Even  then,  out  of  the  total  of  4,233  accidents  in 
1910,  1,876  of  them  were  caused  by  the  street- 
railway  cars.  This  shows  of  itself  how  light  the 
traffic  must  be,  for  worse  driving  and  more  awk- 
ward pedestrians  one  would  go  far  to  find. 

The  cost  of  Berlin  housekeeping  increases  by 
leaps  and  bounds.  The  total  city  expenses  were: 
45,221,988  marks  in  1880;  89,364,270  in  1890; 
121,405,356  in  1900;  and  355,424,614  in  1910. 
The  debt  of  Berlin  has  risen  from  126,161,605 
marks  in  1880,  and  272,912,350  in  1900,  to  475,- 
799,231  in  1910,  with  a  very  considerable  addi- 
tion voted  for  1912.  In  the  ten  years  alone  be- 
tween 1897  and  1907  the  debt  of  German  cities 
including  only  those  with  a  population  of  more 
than  10,000,  increased  by  $1,050,000,000.  Mu- 


254     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

nicipal  expenditure  in  Paris  has  risen  in  the  last 
ten  years  from  $59,200,000  to  $76,000,000. 
The  budget  expenditure  of  France  has  reached 
$1 ,040,000,000.  In  1898  it  was  only  $600,000,000. 

It  cannot  be  expected  that  the  best-kept, 
cleanest,  and  most  orderly  cities  in  the  world,  and 
there  need  be  no  hesitation  in  saying  this  of  the 
German  cities,  should  not  spend  much  money, 
and  the  states  in  which  they  are  situated  much 
money  as  well.  The  various  states  of  the  em- 
pire spent,  according  to  a  report  of  four  years 
ago,  $1,352,500,000;  and  the  empire  itself  $738,- 
250,000,  or  a  total  of  $2,090,750,000.  From  the 
various  state  or  empire  controlled  enterprises, 
such  as  railways,  forests,  mines,  post  and  tele- 
graph, imperial  printing-office,  and  so  on,  the 
states  and  empire  received  a  net  income  of 
$216,525,000,  and  the  balance  was,  of  course, 
raised  by  direct  and  indirect  taxation. 

One  may  put  appropriately  enough  under  this 
heading,  the  invaluable  and  unpaid  services  of  a 
host  of  honorary  officials,  who  render  expert  ser- 
vice both  in  the  state  and  city  governments. 
There  are  over  ten  thousand  honorary  officials 
in  the  city  of  Berlin  alone,  more  than  three  thou- 
sand of  whom  serve  under  the  school  authorities. 
They  are  chosen  from  citizens  of  standing,  edu- 
cation, wealth,  and  ability,  and  assist  in  all  the 


BERLIN  255 

departments  with  advice  and  expert  knowledge, 
and  sit  upon  the  various  committees.  The  Ger- 
man citizen  has  not  only  his  pocket  taxed,  but 
his  patriotism  also,  and  a  capital  philosophy  of 
government  this  implies. 

A  friend,  a  large  landholder  in  Saxony,  gives, 
between  his  services  as  a  reserve  officer  in  the 
army  and  his  magisterial  and  other  duties,  some- 
thing over  nine  weeks  of  his  time  to  the  state 
every  year,  and  he  is  by  no  means  an  exception, 
he  tells  me.  A  certain  amount  of  this  is  required 
of  him  by  the  state,  with  a  heavy  fine  for  non- 
performance  of  these  duties.  The  same  is  true 
of  the  many  members  of  the  various  standing 
committees  in  the  cities.  Each  citizen  is  com- 
pelled to  contribute  a  certain  proportion  of  his 
mental  and  moral  prowess  to  the  service  of  his 
state  and  city,  but  he  receives  a  return  for  it  in 
his  beautifully  kept  city,  in  the  educational  ad- 
vantages, in  the  theatres,  concerts,  opera,  and  in 
the  peaceful  orderliness,  the  value  of  which  only 
the  foreigner  can  fully  appreciate. 

Almost  all  the  court  theatres,  for  example, 
throughout  Germany  are  under  a  director  who 
works  in  harmony  with  the  reigning  prince. 
The  King  of  Prussia  gives  for  his  theatres  in  Ber- 
lin, Wiesbaden,  Hanover,  and  Cassel,  more  than 
$625,000  a  year  from  his  private  purse;  the  Duke 


of  Anhalt,  $75,000  a  year  to  the  Dessauer  the- 
atre. The  players  have  a  sure  position  under 
responsible  and  intelligent  government,  and  feel 
themselves  to  be  not  mere  puppets,  but  educa- 
tional factors  with  a  certain  pride  and  dignity 
in  their  work.; 

There  are  more  Shakespeare  plays  given  in 
Germany  in  a  week  than  in  all  the  English-speak- 
ing countries  together  in  a  year.  This  is  by  no 
means  an  exaggeration.  The  theatre  is  looked 
upon  as  a  school.  Fathers  and  mothers  arrange 
that  their  older  children  as  well  as  themselves 
shall  attend  the  theatre  all  through  the  winter, 
and  subscribe  for  seats  as  we  would  subscribe 
to  a  lending  library.  During  the  last  year  in 
Germany,  the  plays  of  Schiller  were  given  1,584 
times,  of  Shakespeare  1,042  times,  the  music- 
dramas  of  Wagner  1,815  times,  the  plays  of 
Goethe  700  times,  and  of  Hauptmann  600  times. 
There  is  no  spectacular  gorgeousness,  as  when 
an  Irving,  a  Booth,  or  a  Beerbohm  Tree  sugar- 
coats  Shakespeare  to  induce  us  barbarians  to 
go,  in  the  belief  that  we  are  after  all  not  wast- 
ing our  time,  since  the  performance  tastes  a 
little  of  the  more  gorgeous  music  halls.  The 
scenery  and  costumes  are  sufficient,  and  the 
performance  always  worth  intelligent  attention, 
for  the  reason  that  both  the  director  and  his 


BERLIN  257 

players  have  given  time  and  scholarship  to  its 
interpretation.  The  acting  is  often  indifferent 
as  compared  to  the  French  stage,  but  it  is  at 
least  always  in  earnest  and  intelligent.  The 
theatre  prices  in  Berlin  are  high,  even  as  com- 
pared with  New  York  prices,  but  in  other  cities 
and  towns  of  Germany  cheaper  than  in  Eng- 
land, France,  or  America. 

Pericles  passed  a  law  in  Athens  by  which  each 
citizen  was  granted  two  oboli,  one  to  pay  for  his 
seat  at  the  theatre,  the  other  to  provide  himself 
with  refreshment.  In  Athens  the  play  began  at 
6  or  7  A.  M.,  and  during  the  morning  three  trage- 
dies and  a  satirical  drama  were  played,  followed 
in  the  afternoon  by  a  comedy.  The  theatre  of 
Dionysius  seated  30,000  people,  who  brought 
their  cushions,  food,  and  drink,  and  occasionally 
used  them  to  express  their  dislike  of  the  perform- 
ance or  the  performers.  At  one  of  the  larger  in- 
dustrial towns  in  Germany,  during  a  Sunday  of 
my  visit,  there  were  three  performances;  one  at 
11  A.  M.,  of  a  patriotic  melodrama,  "Glaube  und 
Heimat";  another,  at  3.30  p.  M.,  of  "Der  Frei- 
schiitz";  and  another,  at  7.30  p.  M.,  of  Suder- 
mann's  play,  "Die  Ehre."  The  prices  of  seats 
for  the  morning  performance  ranged  from  eight 
cents  to  forty-five  cents ;  a  little  more  in  the  after- 
noon; and  from  seventeen  cents  to  $1.15  in  the 


258    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

evening.  At  the  performance  I  attended  the 
house  was  crowded  and  attentive.  I  was  not 
enough  of  an  Athenian  to  attend  all  three.  Even 
at  the  Music  Hall  in  Berlin,  where,  as  in  other 
cities,  the  thinly  covered  salacious  is  ladled  out 
to  the  animal  man,  there  was  a  capital  stage  carM 
cature  of  (Edipus,  which  atoned  for  the  custom- 
ary ewig  L,egliche,  which  now  rules  in  these  re- 
sorts. If  for  some  untoward  reason  women 
ceased  to  have  legs,  what  would  the  British  and 
American  theatrical  trust  managers  do! 

The  German  takes  his  theatre  and  his  music, 
as  from  the  beginnings  of  these  it  was  intended 
we  all  should  do.  They  are  not  a  distraction 
merely,  but  an  education,  an  education  of  the 
senses,  and  through  the  senses  of  the  whole  man. 
There  are  music-lovers  and  serious  playgoers  in 
America;  but  for  the  most  part  our  theatres  cater 
to,  and  are  filled  by,  a  public  seeking  a  soothing 
and  condimented  mental  atmosphere,  in  which  to 
finish  digestion.  Theatrical  salmagundi  is  served 
everywhere,  and  seems  to  be  the  dish  best  suited 
to  the  American  aesthetic  palate  as  thus  far  educa- 
ted. We  cannot  complain,  since  other  wares  would 
be  quickly  provided  did  we  but  ask  for  them. 

America  has  suffered  because  she  was  over- 
taken by  a  great  material  prosperity  before  she 
had  a  sufficient  spiritual  and  intellectual  develop- 


BERLIN  259 

ment,  and  up  to  now  the  material  side  of  life  has 
had  the  upper  hand.  We  buy  the  best  pictures, 
the  rare  books  and  manuscripts,  armor  and  silver 
and  porcelain,  and  it  must  be  said  that  there  is  a 
fine  idealism  here,  because  they  are  bought  al- 
most without  exception  by  uncultured,  often 
almost  unlettered,  rich  men,  who  know  nothing 
and  care  very  little  for  these  things,  but  who 
are  providing  rare  educational  opportunities  for 
another  generation.  In  1910  objects  of  art  to 
the  value  of  $22,000,000  were  imported,  in  1911 
$36,000,000  worth,  and  in  1912  sixty  per  cent, 
more  than  in  1911.  In  the  same  way  we  hire 
the  best  musicians  and  singers,  but  our  surround- 
ings and  the  powerful  circumambient  ambitions, 
have  not  tempted  us  as  yet  to  live  contentedly 
and  understandingly  in  any  such  atmosphere  as 
the  Germans  do.  It  is  a  striking  contrast,  per- 
haps of  all  the  contrasts  the  most  interesting  to 
the  student,  this  of  America  growing  from  in- 
dustrialism toward  idealism,  of  Germany  growing 
out  of  idealism  into  industrialism. 

Germany  floats  in  music;  in  America  a  few,  a 
very  few,  float  on  it.  In  Germany  everybody 
sings,  almost  everybody  plays  some  instrument, 
and  from  the  youngest  to  the  oldest  everybody 
understands  music;  at  least  that  is  the  impres- 
sion you  carry  away  with  you  from  the  land  of 


260     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Bach,  Handel,  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Brahms, 
and  Beethoven,  and  Wagner,  and  I  might  fill  the 
page  with  the  others. 

You  are  at  least  on  the  ramparts  of  Paradise, 
in  the  Thomas  Kirche  in  Leipsic  at  the  weekly 
Saturday  concert  of  the  scholars  of  the  Thomas 
Schule.  The  worldliness  is  melted  out  of  you, 
as  you  sit  in  the  cool,  quiet  church  with  the  sun- 
light slanting  in  upon  you,  and  the  atmosphere 
alive  with  sweet  sounds.  And  this  is  only  one 
of  hundreds  of  such  experiences  all  over  Ger- 
many. At  the  Kreuz  Kirche  in  Dresden,  at  the 
great  Dom  church  in  Berlin  at  Easter  time,  for 
the  asking  you  may  have  the  oil  and  wine  of 
music's  Good  Samaritan  poured  upon  the  wounds 
of  those  sore-pressed  travellers,  your  hopes  and 
ideals,  your  dreams  and  ambitions,  that  have 
fallen  among  thieves,  on  the  long,  long  way  from 
Jericho  to  Jerusalem. 

It  is,  I  must  admit,  a  drab  and  dreary  crowd 
to  look  at,  these  Germans  at  the  theatre,  at  the 
opera,  in  the  concert  halls.  They  do  not  dress, 
or  if  they  are  women  undress,  for  their  music  as 
do  we ;  their  music  dresses  for  them.  They  come, 
most  of  them,  in  the  clothes  that  they  have  worn 
all  day,  each  quidlibet  induitus.  They  have 
many  of  them  a  meal  of  meat,  bread,  and  beer 
during  the  long  pause  between  two  of  the  acts, 


BERLIN  261 

always  provided  for  this  purpose.  Some  of  them 
bring  little  bags  with  their  own  provisions,  and 
only  buy  a  glass  of  beer.  They  are  solemnly  at- 
tentive, an  educated  and  experienced  audience 
there  for  a  purpose,  and  not  to  be  trifled  with, 
the  most  competently  critical  audience  in  the 
world.  I  wonder  as  I  look  at  them  whether  the 
fact  that  they  have  no  backs  to  their  heads,  em- 
phasized nowadays  by  the  fact  that  many  men 
wear  their  hair  clipped  close  to  the  head,  and  no 
chins  (the  lack  of  chins  in  Germany  is  almost  a 
national  peculiarity)  has  any  physiological  or 
psychological  relation  to  their  prowess  in,  and 
love  of,  and  critical  appreciation  of,  the  more 
nebulous  arts:  music,  poetry,  philosophy,  and 
the  serious  drama. 

They  are  as  adamant  in  their  observance  of  the 
rules  in  such  matters.  More  than  once  I  ar- 
rived at  the  opera  a  few  minutes  late,  once  four 
minutes  late,  the  doors  are  closed  and  guarded, 
and  I  listen  to  the  overture  from  the  outside. 
At  a  concert  led  by  the  famous  von  Billow  half  a 
dozen  women  come  in  after  the  music  has  begun, 
rustling,  sibilant,  and  excited.  The  music  stops, 
the  great  conductor  turns  to  glare  at  them,  and, 
referring  to  the  geese  which  are  said  to  have 
saved  Rome  by  their  hissing,  thunders:  "Hier  ist 
kein  Capitol  zu  retten!" 


262    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

There  are  some  forty  thousand  professional 
musicians  in  Germany.  The  town  council  of 
Berlin  is  now  discussing  gravely  the  sum  to  be  al- 
lotted to  the  support  of  the  Symphony  Orchestra, 
and  Charlottenburg  is  building  an  opera  house 
of  its  own,  and  Spandau  a  theatre;  and  there  has 
just  been  formed  in  Berlin  a  "Society  of  the 
German  Artistes'  Theatre,"  with  a  capital  of 
$200,000,  which  is  a  project  along  the  general 
lines  of  the  Comedie  Frangaise.  The  discussions 
and  arguments  relating  to  these  municipal  ex- 
penditures, as  I  read  them  in  the  newspapers, 
are  all  based  upon  the  assumption  that  the 
people  have  a  right  to  good  and  cheap  music, 
just  as  they  have  a  right  to  good  and  cheap  beer 
and  bread. 

At  Diisseldorf  one  of  the  theatres,  managed  by 
a  woman,  and  supported  by  the  best  people  in 
the  town,  is  not  only  a  playhouse,  but  a  school 
for  actors,  and  a  proving-ground  for  the  drama. 
It  is  a  treat  indeed  to  attend  the  performances 
there.  We  have  tried  similar  things  in  America, 
but  with  sad  results.  Fifty  millionaires,  no  one 
of  whom  had  ever  read  the  text  of  a  serious  play 
in  his  life,  build  a  temple  for  the  drama,  but 
there  are  no  plays,  no  actors,  no  audience,  noth- 
ing is  accomplished.  There  is  no  critical  body 
of  real  lovers  of  the  drama,  and  there  are  no 


BERLIN  263 

cheap  seats,  and  there  is  still  that  fatuous  notion 
that  exclusiveness,  except  in  the  trifling  mat- 
ter of  physical  propinquity,  can  be  bought  with 
dollars. 

The  only  impenetrably  exclusive  thing  in  the 
world  is  intellect,  he  is  the  only  aristocrat  left 
in  these  democratic  days,  and  we  are  not  devot- 
ing much  attention  as  yet  to  his  breeding.  We 
do  not  realize  that  the  only  valuable  democrat 
must  be  an  aristocrat.  "Culture  seeks  to  do 
away  with  classes  and  sects;  to  make  the  best 
that  has  been  thought  and  known  in  the  world 
current  everywhere;  to  make  all  men  live  in  an 
atmosphere  of  sweetness  and  light,  where  they 
may  use  ideas,  as  it  uses  them  itself,  freely; 
nourished  and  not  bound  by  them.  This  is  the 
social  idea;  and  the  men  of  culture  are  the  true 
apostles  of  equality." 

In  Germany  there  are  more  men  of  culture 
per  thousand  of  the  population  than  in  any  other 
land,  but  they  rule  the  country  not  by  "sweet- 
ness and  light,"  but  by  force.  This  seems  at 
first  a  contradiction.  It  is  not.  Religion,  life, 
and  love  are  all  savage  things.  Because  we  have 
known  men  who  preach  but  do  not  believe;  men 
who  breathe  and  walk  who  have  not  lived;  men 
who  protest  but  who  have  not  loved,  we  are 
prone  to  think  of  religion,  life,  and  love  as  soft. 


264     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

We  have  conquered  and  chastened  so  much  of 
nature :  the  air,  the  water,  the  bowels  of  the  earth 
that  we  fool  ourselves  with  thinking  that  cul- 
ture also  is  tame,  that  religion,  life,  and  love  are 
tame  too.  Savage  things  they  are!  You  may 
know  them  by  that!  If  you  find  them  nice, 
vivacious,  amusing,  amenable,  be  sure  that  they 
are  forgeries. 

This  is  the  profound  fallacy  underlying  the 
present-day  economic  peace  propagandism, 
whose  heaviest  underwriter,  Mr.  Carnegie,  is, 
by  the  way,  an  agnostic.  While  there  is  faith 
there  will  be  fighting.  Do  away  with  either  and 
society  would  crumble.  What  the  Puritans  did 
for  us,  the  Prussians  have  done  for  Germany. 
They  have  fought,  are  fighting,  and  will  fight  for 
their  faith.  Though  they  have  many  unpleas- 
ant characteristics,  this  is  their  most  admirable 
quality.  They  believe  in  an  aristocracy  of  cul- 
ture with  a  right  to  rule.  Goethe  said  of  Luther 
that  he  threw  back  the  intellectual  progress  of 
mankind  by  centuries,  by  calling  in  the  passions 
of  the  multitude  to  decide  on  subjects  that  ought 
to  have  been  left  to  the  learned.  This  is  a  good 
example  of  imitation  culture.  This  is  very  much 
the  view  that  Mr.  Balfour  holds  in  regard  to 
Cromwell.  But  Luther  and  Bismarck  made 
Germany.  The  one  taught  Germany  to  bark, 


BERLIN  265 

the  other  taught  Germany  to  bite.  The  great 
deliverers  of  the  world  came,  not  to  bring  peace, 
but  a  sword. 

When  you  leave  the  drab  crowd  in  the  streets, 
and  enter  the  houses  of  the  real  rulers  of  Ger- 
many, the  contrast  between  the  aristocrat  and 
the  plebeian  is  nowhere  so  outstanding.  I  have 
seen  no  finer-looking  specimens  of  mankind  in 
face  and  figure  and  manner  than  the  best  of  these 
men.  If  you  stroll  though  the  halls  of  the 
Krieges  Akademie,  where  the  pick  of  the  young 
officers  of  the  German  army,  are  preparing  them- 
selves for  the  examinations  which  admit  a  very 
small  proportion  of  them,  to  appointments  on  the 
general  staff,  you  will  be  delighted  with  the  faces 
and  figures,  and  the  air  of  alertness  and  intelli- 
gence there:  And  you  will  find  as  fine  a  type  of 
gentlemen,  in  face,  manners,  and  figure,  at  their 
head  as  exists  anywhere. 

There  are  complaints  that  this  Prussian  aris- 
tocracy is  socially  exclusive,  is  given  office  both 
in  the  army  and  in  civil  life  too  readily ;  but  what 
an  aristocracy  it  is!  These  are  the  men  whose 
families  gave,  often  their  all,  to  make  Prussia, 
and  then  to  make  Germany.  Service  of  king 
and  country  is  in  their  blood.  They  get  small 
remuneration  for  their  service.  There  is  no  lux- 
ury. They  spurn  the  temptations  of  money. 


266     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Hundreds  and  hundreds  of  them  have  never  been 
inside  the  house  of  a  rich  parvenu,  nor  have  their 
women.  They  work  as  no  other  servants  work, 
they  live  on  little,  they  and  their  women  and 
children;  and  you  may  count  yourself  happily 
privileged  if  they  permit  you  the  intimacy  of 
their  home  life. 

Officers  and  gentlemen  there  are,  living  on  two 
thousand  five  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  most  of 
them  on  much  less,  and  their  wives,  as  well  born 
as  themselves,  darning  their  socks  and  count- 
ing the  pfennigs  with  scrupulous  care.  These 
are  the  women  whose  ancestors  flung  themselves 
against  the  Roman  foe,  beside  their  husbands  and 
brothers;  these  are  the  women  who  gave  their 
jewels  to  save  Prussia;  these  are  the  women,  with 
the  glint  of  steel  and  the  light  of  summer  skies 
braided  in  their  eyes,  who  have  taken  their 
hard,  self-denying  part  in  making  Prussia,  and 
the  German  Empire.  No  wonder  they  despise 
the  mere  money-maker,  no  wonder  they  will 
have  none  of  his  softness  for  themselves,  and 
hate  what  Milton  calls  "lewdly  pampered  lux- 
ury," as  a  danger  to  their  children.  They  know 
well  the  moral  weapons  that  won  for  this 
starved,  and  tormented,  and  poverty-stricken 
land  its  present  place  in  the  world  as  a  great 
power. 


BERLIN  267 

"And  as  the  fervent  smith  of  yore 
Beat  out  the  glowing  blade, 
Nor  wielded  in  the  front  of  war 

The  weapons  that  he  made, 
But  in  the  tower  at  home  still  plied 
His  ringing  trade; 

"So  like  a  sword  the  son  shall  roam 

On  nobler  missions  sent; 
And  as  the  smith  remained  at  home 

In  peaceful  turret  pent, 
So  sits  the  while  at  home  the  mother 
Well  content." 

I,  convinced  democrat  that  I  am,  know  very  well 
that  there  are,  and  always  have  been,  and  always 
will  be  aristocrats,  for  there  is  no  national  salva- 
tion without  them  anywhere  in  the  world.  The 
aristocrats  are  the  same  everywhere,  no  matter 
what  their  distinctions  of  title,  or  whether  they 
have  none.  They  are  those  who  believe  that 
they  owe  their  best  to  God  and  to  men,  and  they 
serve.  Likewise  the  plebeians  are  the  same  all 
over  the  world;  whatever  their  presumptions  or 
denials,  they  believe  that  they  are  here  to  get 
what  they  can  out  of  God  and  men,  and  they 
take  far  more  than  they  give. 

Perhaps  no  feature  of  German  life  is  so  little 
known,  so  little  understood,  as  this  simple-living, 
proud,  and  exclusive  caste,  who  have  made,  and 


268     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

still  protect  and  guard,  Prussia  and  Germany. 
They  say:  "We  made  Prussia  and  Germany,  and 
we  intend  to  guard  them,  both  from  enemies  at 
home  and  from  enemies  abroad!"  My  admira- 
tion for  these  men  and  women  is  so  unbounded, 
that  I  would  no  more  carry  criticism  with  me 
into  their  homes,  than  I  would  carry  mud  into  a 
sanctuary. 

They  have  done  much  for  Germany,  but  the 
best,  perhaps,  of  all  is  that  they  have  made 
economy  and  simple  living  feasible  and  even 
fashionable;  they  have  made  talent  aristocratic; 
they  have  insisted  that  social  life  shall  be  founded 
on  service  and  breeding  and  ability.  They  will 
have  no  dealings  with  Herr  Miiller,  the  rich  shop- 
keeper, but  whatever  name  the  distinguished 
artist,  or  public  servant,  or  man  of  science,  or 
young  giant  in  any  field  of  intellectual  prowess 
may  bear,  he  is  welcomed.  In  general  this  wel- 
come given  by  German  society  to  talent  holds 
good.  There  is,  however,  a  society  composed 
of  the  great  landed  proprietors,  who  live  in  the 
country,  who  come  to  Berlin  rarely,  and  whose 
horizon  is  limited  severely  to  their  own  small 
interests,  their  restricted  circle,  and  by  their  pro- 
vincial pride.  They  recognize  nobody  but  them- 
selves, for  the  reason  that  they  know  nobody  and 
nothing  else.  There  is  an  exclusiveness  born  of 


BERLIN  269 

stupidity,  just  as  there  is  an  exclusiveness  born 
of  a  sense  of  duty  to  one's  position  and  traditions 
in  the  world.  One  must  recognize  that  this  side 
of  social  life  exists  in  Germany  just  as  it  exists 
in  England,  and  France,  and  Austria,  but  it  is 
fast  losing  its  importance  and  its  power. 

One  hears  it  lamented  that  society  is  changing, 
that  the  rich  Jew  and  the  rich  gentile  are  re- 
ceived where  twenty -five  years  ago  the  social  por- 
tals were  shut  against  them,  and  that  many  go  to 
their  houses  who  would  not  have  gone  not  many 
years  ago.  My  experience  is  too  slender  to  weigh 
these  matters  in  years;  my  contention  is  only 
that,  from  an  American  or  English  stand-point, 
their  social  life  is  notably  simple,  and  still  largely 
founded  on  merit  and  service,  rather  than  upon 
the  means  to  provide  luxury. 

Though  there  are  thousands  of  people  received 
at  court  each  year,  this  does  not  mean  that  they 
are  invited  to  the  intimate  parties  of  those  in  the 
more  intimate  court  circles.  They  are  tolerated, 
not  welcomed.  Such  people  are  invited  to  the 
court  ball,  but  never  thought  of,  even,  as  guests  at 
the  small  supper  party  of,  say,  a  court  official  later 
in  the  evening.  Prussia  and  Germany  are  still 
ruled  socially  and  politically  by  a  small  group  of, 
roughly,  fifty  thousand  men,  eight  thousand  of 
them  in  the  frock-coat  of  the  civilian  official,  and 


270     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  rest  in  military  uniforms.  Added  to  this 
must  be  named  a  few  great  financiers,  shipping 
and  mining  and  industrial  magnates,  and  great 
land-owners,  and  less  than  half  a  dozen  journal- 
ists, and  as  many  professors. 

According  to  the  census  there  are  in  all  only 
720  persons  in  Berlin  with  incomes  of  more  than 
$25,000  a  year,  and  521  of  these  have  between 
$25,000  and  $60,000  a  year,  leaving  a  very  small 
number,  indeed,  with  incomes  adequate,  from  an 
American  point  of  view,  for  extravagant  social 
expenditure.  Of  these  200,  probably  not  50  are 
figures  in  the  social  life  of  the  capital.  It  may 
be  seen  at  once,  therefore,  that  entertaining  can- 
not be  on  a  lavish  or  spectacular  scale. 

The  minister  of  foreign  affairs  and  the  im- 
perial minister  of  the  interior  receive  salaries  of 
36,000  marks,  with  14,000  marks  additional  for 
expenses.  The  Prussian  ministers  have  the 
same.  Other  ministers  receive  30,000  marks  and 
14,000  additional  for  expenses.  The  chancellor 
of  the  empire  receives  36,000  marks  and  64,000 
additional  for  expenses.  The  highest  receivable 
pension  is  three-fourths  of  the  salary  —  not  count- 
ing the  additional  sum  for  expenses,  or,  as  it 
is  named,  Reprdsentationsaufwand  —  after  forty 
years  of  service.  The  foreign  ambassadors  to 
the  more  expensive  capitals,  London,  Paris, 


BERLIN  271 

Washington,  Saint  Petersburg,  receive  150,000 
marks  a  year.  Where  one  has  seen  something 
of  the  innumerable  demands  upon  the  income 
of  a  foreign  ambassador,  one  is  the  more  amazed 
that  a  great  democracy  like  ours  should  so  re- 
strict the  salaries  of  its  representatives  abroad 
that  only  rich  men  dare  undertake  the  duty. 
What  could  be  more  undemocratic! 

Germany  is  a  rich,  very  rich,  country  in  the 
sense  that  it  has  the  most  intelligent,  hardest- 
working,  most  fiercely  economical,  and  the  most 
rationally  and  most  easily  contented  population 
of  any  of  the  great  powers.  But  Germany  is  not 
rich  in  surplus  and  liquid  capital  as  compared 
with  England,  France,  or  America.  It  is  the 
more  to  her  credit  that  her  capital  is  all  hard  at 
work.  There  is  just  so  much  less  for  luxury. 
The  people  in  the  streets;  the  shop- windows;  the 
scale  of  charges  at  places  of  public  resort  and 
amusement;  the  very  small  number  of  well- 
turned-out  private  vehicles;  the  comparatively 
few  people  who  live  in  houses  and  not  in  apart- 
ments; the  simplicity  of  the  gowns  of  the  women, 
and  their  inexpensive  jewelry  and  other  orna- 
ments; the  fewer  servants;  the  salaries  and 
wages  of  all  classes,  point  decisively  to  plain  liv- 
ing on  the  part  of  practically  everybody.  Let 
me  say  very  emphatically,  however,  that  this 


272     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

economy  means  no  lack  of  generosity.  I  doubt 
if  there  are  people  anywhere  so  restricted  as 
to  means,  and  so  delightfully  hospitable  at  the 
same  time.  Berlin  is  not  as  yet  under  that  cloud 
that  covers  the  new,  uncultivated,  and  rich  so- 
ciety in  America,  that  tyranny  of  money  which 
makes  men  and  women  fearful  of  being  without 
it.  Such  people  shiver  at  the  bare  thought  of 
losing  what  money  will  buy,  for  the  shameful 
reason  that  then  there  would  be  nothing  left  to 
them;  and  they  are  driven,  many  of  them,  both 
in  London  and  in  New  York,  to  any  humilia- 
tion, often  to  any  degradation,  to  avoid  it. 
They  grossly  overrate  the  value  of  money,  and 
they  exaggerate  the  terrors  of  being  without  it. 
Professor  William  James,  who  succeeded  in 
analyzing  what  is  at  the  back  of  men's  brains  as 
well  as  anybody,  writes:  "We  have  grown  liter- 
ally afraid  to  be  poor.  We  despise  any  one  who 
elects  to  be  poor  in  order  to  simplify  and  save  his 
inner  life.  We  have  lost  the  power  of  even 
imagining  what  the  ancient  idealization  of  pov- 
erty could  have  meant :  the  liberation  from  mate- 
rial attachments,  the  unbribed  soul,  the  manlier 
indifference,  the  paying  our  way  by  what  we  are 
or  do,  and  not  by  what  we  have,  the  right  to 
fling  away  our  life  at  any  moment  irresponsibly 
—  the  more  athletic  trim,  in  short,  the  moral 


BERLIN  273 

fighting  shape.  ...  It  is  certain  that  the  prev- 
alent fear  of  poverty  among  the  educated  classes 
is  the  worst  moral  disease  from  which  our  civili- 
zation suffers."  They  suffer  from  this  malady 
less  in  Germany  than  in  America  or  in  England. 
I  should  like  to  introduce  such  people  into  dozens 
of  households  in  Berlin;  alas,  they  could  not 
speak  or  understand  the  moral  or  mental  lan- 
guage there,  where  there  is  everything  that 
makes  a  home's  heart  beat  proudly  and  peace- 
ably, except  money.  "La  prosperite  decouvre 
les  vices,  et  1'adversite  les  vertus." 

These  people  need  no  tribute  from  me,  and 
for  their  hospitality  and  friendliness  I  can  make 
no  adequate  return.  I  sigh  to  think  that  we 
in  America  know  so  little  of  them.  Germany 
would  not  be  where  she  is  without  them;  and  I 
offer  them  as  an  example  to  my  countrymen,  and 
to  my  countrywomen  especially,  as  showing  what 
self-sacrifice  and  simplicity,  and  loyal  service  can 
do  for  a  nation  in  times  of  stress;  and  what  high 
ideals  and  sturdy  independence  and  contempt 
for  luxury  can  do  in  the  dangerous  days  of 
prosperity.  Unadvertised,  unheralded,  keeping 
without  murmuring  or  envy  to  their  own  tradi- 
tions, they  are  here,  as  everywhere,  the  saviors 
of  the  world. 

In  this  great  city  of  Berlin  it  may  seem  that  I 


have  over-emphasized  their  part  in  the  drama  of 
the  city's  life.  Not  so !  They  are  the  backbone 
of  the  municipal  as  of  the  national  body  corpo- 
rate. It  is  no  easy  industrial  progress,  no  in- 
creasing wealth  and  population,  no  military 
prowess,  no  isolated  great  leader  that  makes  a 
nation  or  a  city.  It  is  the  men  and  women  giv- 
ing the  high  and  unpurchasable  gift  of  service 
to  the  state;  giving  the  fine  example  of  self-sacri- 
ficing and  simple  living;  giving  the  prowess  won 
by  years  of  hard  mental  and  moral  training;  giv- 
ing the  gentle  courtesy  and  kindly  welcome  of 
the  patrician  to  the  stranger,  who  lift  a  nation  or 
a  city  to  a  worthy  place  in  the  world.  Seek  not 
for  Germany's  strength  first  in  her  fleet,  her 
army,  her  hordes  of  workers,  nay,  not  even  in  her 
philosophers,  teachers,  and  musicians,  though 
they  glisten  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  world,  for  you 
will  not  find  it  there.  It  is  in  these  quiet  and 
simple  homes,  that  so  few  Americans  and  Eng- 
lishmen ever  enter,  that  you  will  find  the  sweet- 
ness and  the  sternness,  the  indomitable  pride  of 
service,  and  the  self-sacrificing  loyalty  that  won, 
and  that  keep  for  Germany  her  place  in  the 
world. 


VI 

"A  LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS" 

IT  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  could  Lord 
Palmerston  have  seen  what  I  have  seen  of 
the  changes  in  Germany,  he  would  at  least 
have  placed  the  "damned,"  in  another  part  of 
his  famous  sentence.  These  professors  have 
turned  their  prowess  into  channels  which  have 
given  Germany,  in  this  scientific  industrial  age, 
a  mighty  grip  upon  something  more  than  theo- 
ries. It  may  be  dull  reading  to  tell  the  tale  of 
damned  professordom,  but  it  is  to  Germany 
that  we  must  all  go  to  school  in  these  matters. 
The  American  chooses  his  university  or  college 
because  it  is  in  the  neighborhood;  because  his 
father  or  other  relatives  went  there;  because  his 
school  friends  are  going  there;  on  account  of  the 
prestige  of  the  place;  sometimes,  too,  because 
one  is  considered  more  democratic  than  another; 
sometimes,  and  perhaps  more  often  than  we 
think,  on  account  of  the  athletics;  because  it  is 
large  or  small;  or  on  account  of  the  cost. 

The  German  youth,  owing  to  widely  different 
customs  and  ideals,  chooses  his  university  for 

275 


276     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

other  reasons.  If  he  be  of  the  well-to-do  classes, 
and  his  father  before  him  was  a  corps  student, 
he  is  likely  to  go  first  to  the  university,  where  his 
father's  corps  will  receive  him  and  discipline  him 
in  the  ways  of  a  corps  student's  life,  and  rigor- 
ous ways  they  are,  as  we  shall  see.  Young  men 
of  small  means,  and  who  can  afford  to  waste 
little  time  in  the  amusements  of  university  life, 
go  at  once  where  the  more  celebrated  professors 
in  their  particular  line  of  work  are  lecturing. 

Few  students  in  Germany  reside  during  their 
whole  course  of  study  at  one  university.  The 
student  year  is  divided  into  two  so-called  sem- 
esters. The  student  remains,  say,  in  Heidel- 
berg two  years  or  perhaps  less,  and  then  moves 
on,  let  us  say,  to  Berlin,  or  Gottingen,  or  Leipsic, 
or  Kiel,  to  hear  lectures  by  other  professors,  and 
to  get  and  to  see  something  of  the  best  work  in 
law,  theology,  medicine,  history,  or  belles-lettres, 
along  the  lines  of  his  chosen  work. 

One  can  hardly  say  too  much  in  praise  of  this 
system.  Many  a  medical,  or  law,  or  theological, 
or  philosophical  student,  or  one  who  is  going  in 
for  a  scientific  course  in  engineering  or  mining, 
would  profit  enormously  could  he  go  from  Har- 
vard to  Yale,  or  to  Johns  Hopkins,  or  to  Prince- 
ton, or  to  Columbia,  and  attend  the  lectures  of 
the  best  men  at  these  and  other  universities. 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     277 

Many  a  man  would  have  gone  eagerly  to  Har- 
vard to  hear  James  in  philosophy,  Peirce  in 
mathematics,  Abbot  in  exegesis,  or  to  read  Greek 
with  Palmer;  or  to  Yale  to  have  heard  Whitney 
in  philology  in  my  day;  or  now,  to  name  but  a 
few,  Van  Dyke  at  Princeton,  Sloane  at  Colum- 
bia, Wheeler  at  the  University  of  California, 
Paul  Shorey  at  Chicago,  and  many  others  are 
men  whom  not  to  know  and  to  hear  in  one's 
student  days  is  a  loss. 

The  German  student  is  at  a  distinct  advantage 
in  this  privilege  of  hearing  the  best  men  at  what- 
ever university  they  may  be.  The  number  of 
students,  indeed,  at  particular  German  universi- 
ties rises  and  falls  in  a  large  measure  according  to 
the  fame  and  ability  of  the  professors  who  may 
be  lecturing  there.  One  can  readily  imagine  how 
such  men  as  Hegel,  or  Ranke,  or  Mommsen, 
who  lectured  at  Berlin;  or  Liebig  or  Dollinger,  at 
Munich;  or  Ewald,  at  Gottingen;  or  Sybel,  at 
Bonn;  or  Leibnitz  or  Schlegel,  in  their  day,  or 
Kuno  Fischer,  in  my  day,  at  Heidelberg,  must 
have  drawn  students  from  all  parts  of  Germany; 
just  as  do  Harnack,  and  Schmidt,  and  Lam- 
precht,  and  Adolph  Wagner,  Schmoller,  or 
Gierke,  or  Schiemann,  or  Wach,  Haeckel,  List, 
Deitsch,  Hering,  or  Verworm,  in  these  days. 
Though  the  German  professors  are  somewhat 


278     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

hampered  by  the  fact  that  they  are  servants  of 
the  state,  and  their  opinions  therefore  on  theo- 
logical, political,  and  economic  matters  restricted 
to  the  state's  views,  they  are  free  as  no  other 
teachers  in  the  world  to  exploit  their  intellectual 
prowess  for  the  benefit  of  their  purses.  Each 
student  pays  each  professor  whose  lectures  he 
attends,  and  as  a  result  there  are  certain  pro- 
fessors in  Germany  whose  incomes  are  as  high 
as  $50,000  a  year. 

Even  in  intellectual  matters  state  control  pro- 
duces the  inevitable  state  laziness  and  indiffer- 
ence. One  could  tell  many  a  tale  of  profess- 
ors who  arrive  late  at  their  lecture-rooms,  who 
read  slowly,  who  give  just  as  little  matter  as 
they  can,  in  order  to  make  their  prepared  work 
go  as  far  as  possible.  Some  of  them,  too,  read 
the  same  lectures  over  and  over  again,  year 
after  year,  quite  content  that  they  have  made  a 
reputation,  gained  a  fixed  tenure  of  their  posi- 
tions, and  are  sure  of  a  pension. 

There  are  twenty-one  universities  in  Germany, 
with  another  already  provided  for  this  year  in 
Frankfort,  and  practically  the  equivalent  of  a 
university  in  Hamburg.  The  total  number  of 
students  is  66,358,  an  increase  since  1895  of 
37,791.  Geographically  speaking,  one  has  the 
choice  between  Kiel,  Konigsberg,  and  Berlin  in 


the  north,  Munich  in  the  south,  Strassburg  on 
the  boundaries  of  France,  or  Breslau  in  Silesia. 
At  the  present  writing  Berlin  has  9,686  students, 
and  some  5,000  more  authorized  to  attend 
lectures,  over  half  of  them  grouped  under  the 
general  heading  "Philosophy";  next  comes  Mu- 
nich with  7,000,  nearly  5,000  of  them  grouped 
under  the  headings  "Jurisprudence"  and  "Phi- 
losophy"; then  Leipsic  with  5,000;  then  Bonn 
with  4,000 ;  and  last  in  point  of  numbers  Rostock 
with  800  students.  There  are  now  some  1,500 
women  students  at  the  German  universities,  but 
a  total  of  4,500  who  attend  lectures,  and  Doctor 
Marie  Linden  at  the  beginning  of  1911  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  professors  of  the  medical  fac- 
ulty at  Bonn,  but  the  appointment  was  vetoed 
by  the  Prussian  ministry. 

In  addition  to  the  universities  is  the  modern 
development  of  the  technical  high-schools,  of 
which  there  are  now  eleven,  one  each  in  Berlin, 
Dresden,  Braunschweig,  Darmstadt,  Hanover, 
Karlsruhe,  Munich,  Stuttgart,  Danzig,  Aix,  and 
Breslau.  These  schools  have  faculties  of  archi- 
tecture, building  construction,  mechanical  en- 
gineering, chemistry,  and  general  science,  includ- 
ing mathematics  and  natural  science.  They 
confer  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Engineering,  and 
admit  those  students  holding  the  certificate  of 


280    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  Gymnasium,  Real  gymnasium,  and  Oberreal- 
schule.  They  rank  now  with  the  universities, 
and  their  17,000  students  may  fairly  be  added  to 
the  grand  total  number  of  German  students, 
making  83,000  in  all,  and  if  to  this  be  added  the 
4,000  unmatriculated  students,  we  have  87,000. 
While  the  population  of  Germany  has  in- 
creased 1.4  per  cent,  in  the  last  year,  the  num- 
ber of  students  has  increased  4.6  per  cent,  and  of 
the  total  number  4.4  per  cent,  are  women.  Since 
the  founding  of  the  empire  the  population  has 
increased  from  40,000,000  to  65,000,000,  but  the 
number  of  students  has  increased  from  18,000  to 
60,000.  The  teaching  staffs  in  the  universities 
number  3,400,  and  in  the  technical  high-schools 
753,  or,  roughly,  there  are,  in  the  higher-educa- 
tion department  of  Germany,  nearly  90,000  per- 
sons engaged;  as  these  figures  do  not  include 
officials  and  many  unattached  teachers  and 
students  indirectly  connected  with  the  univer- 
sities. There  are  in  addition  agricultural  high- 
schools,  agricultural  institutes,  and  technical 
schools  such  as  veterinary  high-schools,  schools 
of  mining,  forestry,  architecture  and  building, 
commercial  schools,  schools  of  art  and  industry; 
a  naval  school  at  Kiel;  a  colonial  institute  at 
Hamburg,  with  sixty  professors  and  tutors, 
where  men  are  trained  for  colonial  careers,  and 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     281 

which  serves  also  the  purpose  of  distributing 
information  of  all  kinds  regarding  the  colonies; 
there  are  400  schools  which  prepare  for  a  busi- 
ness career,  with  50,000  pupils,  and  the  Social- 
ists in  Berlin  maintain  an  academy  for  the  in- 
struction of  their  paid  secretaries  and  organizers 
in  the  rudiments  and  controversial  points  of 
socialism,  military  academies  at  Berlin  and 
Munich,  besides  some  50  schools  of  navigation, 
and  20  military  and  cadet  institutions.  There 
are  also  courses  of  lectures,  given  under  the 
auspices  of  the  German  foreign  office,  to  in- 
struct candidates  for  the  consular  service  in  the 
commercial  and  industrial  affairs  of  Germany. 

At  several  of  the  universities  evening  exten- 
sion lectures  are  given,  an  innovation  first  tried 
at  Leipsic,  where  more  than  seven  thousand 
persons  paid  small  fees  to  attend  the  lectures 
in  a  recent  year. 

If  one  considers  the  range  of  instruction  from 
the  Volksschulen  and  Fortbildungsschulen  up 
through  the  skeleton  list  I  have  mentioned  to  the 
universities,  and  then  on  beyond  that  to  the 
thousands  still  engaged  as  students  in  the  com- 
merce and  industry  of  Germany,  as,  for  example, 
the  technically  employed  men  in  the  Krupp 
Works  at  Essen,  or  the  Color  Works  at  Elber- 
feld,  to  mention  two  of  hundreds,  it  is  seen  that 


282    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Germany  is  gone  over  with  a  veritable  fine-tooth 
comb  of  education.  There  is  not  only  nothing 
like  it,  there  is  nothing  comparable  to  it  in  the 
world.  If  training  the  minds  of  a  population 
were  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  civilization, 
they  are  on  the  way  to  such  solution  in  Germany. 
Unfortunately  there  is  no  such  easy  way  out  of 
our  troubles  for  Germany  or  for  any  other  na- 
tion. Some  of  us  will  live  to  see  this  fetich  of 
regimental  instruction  of  everybody  disappear 
as  astrology  has  disappeared.  There  is  a  Jap- 
anese proverb  which  runs,  "The  bottom  of  light- 
houses is  very  dark." 

As  early  as  1717  Frederick  William  I  in  an 
edict  commanded  parents  to  send  their  children 
to  school,  daily  in  summer,  twice  a  week  in  win- 
ter. Frederick  the  Great  at  the  close  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  1764,  insisted  again  upon 
compulsory  school  attendance,  and  prescribed 
books,  studies,  and  discipline.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century  began  a  great 
change  in  the  primary  schools  due  to  the  influ- 
ence of  Pestalozzi,  and  in  the  secondary  schools 
owing  to  the  efforts  of  Herder,  Frederic  August 
Wolf,  William  Humboldt,  and  Siinern.  Hum- 
boldt  was  the  Prussian  minister  of  education  for 
sixteen  months.  In  1809  he  sent  a  memorial  to 
the  King,  urging  the  establishment  and  endow- 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     283 

ment  of  a  university  in  Berlin.  He  used  his 
authority  and  his  great  influence  to  further 
higher  and  secondary  education,  and  fixed  the 
main  lines  of  action  which  were  followed  for  a 
century.  He  hoped  that  a  liberal  education 
of  his  countrymen  would  make  for  both  an  in- 
tellectual and  moral  regeneration,  and  emanci- 
pate the  people  from  their  sluggish  obedience 
to  conventionality.  The  schools  then  were  part 
of  the  ecclesiastical  organization  and  have  never 
ceased  to  be  so  wholly,  and  until  recently  the 
title  of  the  Prussian  minister  has  been:  "Min- 
ister of  Ecclesiastical  Affairs,  Instruction,  and 
Medical  Affairs."  That  part  of  the  minister's 
title,  "Medical  Affairs,"  has  within  the  last  few 
months  been  eliminated. 

The  French  Revolution,  and  the  dismember- 
ment of  Prussia  at  Tilsit,  put  a  stop  to  orderly 
progress.  Stein  and  his  colleagues,  however, 
started  anew;  students  were  sent  to  Switzerland 
to  study  pedagogical  methods ;  provincial  school- 
boards  were  established,  and  about  1850  all  pub- 
lic-school teachers  were  declared  to  be  civil  ser- 
vants; and  later,  in  1872,  during  Bismarck's 
campaign  against  the  Jesuits,  all  private  schools 
were  made  subject  to  state  inspection.  In 
Prussia  to-day  no  man  or  woman  may  give  in- 
struction even  as  a  governess  or  private  tutor, 
without  the  certificate  of  the  state. 


284     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

This  control  of  education  and  teaching  by  a 
central  authority  is  an  unmixed  blessing.  In 
Prussia,  at  any  rate,  the  officials  are  hard-work- 
ing, conscientious,  and  enthusiastic,  and  the 
system,  whether  one  gives  one's  full  allegiance 
to  it  or  not,  is  admirably  worked  out.  Above 
all,  it  completely  does  away  with  sham  physi- 
cians, sham  doctors  of  divinity,  sham  engineers, 
and  mining  and  chemical  experts,  sham  dentists 
and  veterinary  surgeons,  who  abound  in  our 
country,  where  shoddy  schools  do  a  business  of 
selling  degrees  and  certificates  of  proficiency  in 
everything  from  exegesis  to  obstetrics.  These 
fakir  academies  are  not  only  a  disgrace  but  a 
danger  in  America,  and  here,  as  in  other  matters, 
Germany  has  a  right  to  smile  grimly  at  certain 
of  our  hobbledehoy  methods  of  government. 

The  elementary  schools,  or  Volkschulen,  are 
free,  and  attendance  is  compulsory  from  six  to 
fourteen;  in  addition,  the  Fortbildungsschulen,  or 
continuation  schools,  can  also  be  made  compul- 
sory up  to  eighteen  years  of  age.  There  are 
some  61,000  free  public  elementary  schools  with 
over  10,000,000  pupils,  and  over  600  private  ele- 
mentary schools  with  42,000  pupils  who  pay  fees. 

Under  a  regulation  of  the  Department  of 
Trade  and  Industry,  towns  with  more  than 
twenty  thousand  inhabitants  are  empowered  to 
make  their  own  rules  compelling  commercial 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    285 

employees  under  eighteen  to  attend  the  contin- 
uation schools  a  certain  number  of  hours 
monthly,  and  fining  employers  who  interfere  with 
such  attendance.  It  has  even  been  suggested 
that  this  law  be  extended  to  include  girls. 

In  Berlin  this  has  already  been  put  into  opera- 
tion, and  this  year  some  30,000  girls  will  be  com- 
pelled to  attend  continuation  schools,  where  they 
will  be  taught  cooking,  dress-making,  laundry 
work,  house-keeping  economy,  and  for  those  who 
wish  it,  office  work.  It  will  require  some  train- 
ing even  to  pronounce  the  name  of  this  new  in- 
stitution, which  requires  something  more  than 
the  number  of  letters  in  the  alphabet  to  spell 
it,  for  it  has  this  terrifying  title:  MadchenpfiiGht- 
fortbildungssehule.3  -2- 

The  work  in  these  PfliGhtfortbildungsscliulen-2f* 
or  compulsory  continuation  schools,  is  practical 
and  thorough.  The  boys  are  from  fourteen  to 
eighteen  years  of  age,  and  are  obliged  to  attend 
three  hours  twice  a  week.  Shopkeepers  and 
others,  employing  lads  coming  under  the  pro- 
visions of  the  law,  are  obliged  by  threat  of  heavy 
fines  to  send  them.  The  boys  pay  nothing. 
There  are  some  34,000  of  such  pupils  under  one 
jurisdiction  in  Berlin,  and  the  cost  to  the  city 
is  $300,000  annually.  The  curriculum  includes 
letter-writing,  book-keeping,  exchange,  bank- 


286     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

credits,  checks  and  bills,  the  duty  of  the  busi- 
ness man  to  his  home,  to  the  city,  and  to  his 
fellow  business  men,  his  legal  rights  and  duties, 
and,  in  great  detail,  all  questions  of  citizenship. 
Methods  of  the  banks,  stock  exchange,  and  in- 
surance companies  are  explained.  The  business 
man's  relations  in  detail  to  the  post-office,  the 
railways,  the  customs,  canals,  shipping  agencies 
are  dealt  with.  The  investigation  of  credits  and 
the  general  management  from  cellar  to  attic  of 
what  we  call  a  "store"  are  taught,  and  lectures 
are  given  upon  business  ethics  and  family  rela- 
tions and  morals. 

In  towns  where  factories  are  more  common 
than  shops  there  are  schools  similar  in  kind,  as 
at  Dortmund,  for  example,  where  you  may  begin 
with  horse-shoeing  in  the  cellar,  and  go  up 
through  the  work  of  carpenter,  mason,  plumber, 
sign-painter,  poster-designer,  to  the  designing  of 
stained-glass  windows  and  the  modelling  of  ani- 
mals and  men. 

In  the  strictly  agricultural  districts  of  Prussia 
the  number  of  courses  open  to  those  who  work 
upon  the  land  has  steadily  increased.  In  1882 
there  were  559  courses  of  instruction  and  9,228 
pupils;  in  1902,  1,421  such  courses  and  20,666 
pupils;  and  in  1908,  3,781  courses  and  55,889 
pupils.  About  five  per  cent,  of  the  cost  of  such 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     287 

instruction,  which  cost  the  state  566,599  marks 
in  1908,  is  paid  by  the  fees  of  the  pupils  them- 
selves. 

To  those  interested  in  ways  and  means  it  may 
serve  a  purpose  to  say  that  the  total  cost  of 
these  elementary  schools  amounts  to  $130,715,- 
250  a  year,  of  which  the  various  state  govern- 
ments pay  $37,500,000  and  local  authorities 
the  rest.  In  1910  the  city  of  Berlin  spent 
$9,881,987  on  its  schools.  The  average  cost  per 
pupil  is  $13.50.  In  some  of  the  towns  of  differ- 
ent classes  of  population  that  I  have  visited  the 
number  of  pupils  per  100  inhabitants  stands  as 
follows:  Berlin,  11.1;  Essen,  16.5;  Dortmund,  16; 
Diisseldorf,  13.2;  Charlottenburg,  9;  Duisburg, 
16.7;  Oberhausen,  17.7;  Bielefeld,  14.7;  Bonn, 
11.1;  Cologne,  13.1. 

There  are  170,000  teachers  in  these  elementary 
schools,  of  whom  30,000  are  women.  They  be- 
gin with  $250  a  year,  which  is  raised  to  $300 
when  they  are  given  a  fixed  position.  By  a 
graduated  scale  of  increase  a  teacher  at  the  age 
of  forty-eight  (when  he  may  retire)  may  receive 
a  maximum  of  $725.  A  woman  teacher's  salary 
would  vary  from  $300  to  $600  as  the  maximum. 
These  figures  are  for  Prussia.  In  other  states 
of  the  empire,  in  Bavaria  and  Saxony,  for  ex- 
ample, the  scale  of  salaries  is  somewhat  higher. 


288     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  secondary  schools  are  the  well-known 
Gymnasien  and  Progymnasien,  the  Realgymna- 
sien,  and  the  Realschulen.  Roughly  the  Gym- 
nasien prepare  for  the  universities,  and  the  Real- 
schulen for  the  technical  schools.  Admission  to 
the  universities  and  to  any  form  of  employment 
under  the  civil  service  demands  a  certificate 
from  one  or  another  of  these  secondary  schools. 

In  1890,  two  years  after  the  present  Emperor 
came  to  the  throne,  he  called  together  a  confer- 
ence of  teachers  and  in  an  able  speech  suggested 
that  these  secondary  schools  devote  more  time 
and  attention  to  technical  training.  As  a  result 
of  this,  the  certificates  of  the  Realgymnasien  and 
Realschulen  are  now  received  as  equivalent  to 
those  conferred  by  the  Gymnasien,  where  Latin 
and  Greek  are,  as  they  were  then,  still  para- 
mount. 

Of  these  secondary  schools  some  are  state 
schools;  others  are  municipal  or  trade-supported 
schools;  some  are  private  institutions;  but  all 
are  amenable  to  the  rules,  organization,  and 
curricula  approved  by  the  state.  All  secondary 
and  elementary  teachers  must  meet  the  exam- 
inational requirements  of  the  state,  which  fixes 
a  minimum  salary  and  contributes  thereto.  In 
the  universities  and  technical  high-schools  all 
professors  are  appointed  by  the  state,  and  largely 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     289 

paid  by  the  state  as  well.  In  the  year  1910  the 
German  Empire  expended  under  the  general 
heading  of  elementary  instruction  $130,715,250. 
Prussia  alone  spent  $60,424,325;  Bavaria,  $8,- 
955,825  (though  nearly  $750,000  of  this  total 
went  for  building  and  repairs  for  both  churches 
and  schools);  Baden,  $4,176,075;  Saxony,  $4,- 
573,250;  the  free  city  of  Hamburg,  $5,561,900. 
The  total  expenditures  of  the  empire  and  of  the 
states  of  the  empire  combined  in  1910  amounted 
to  $2,225,225,000;  of  this,  as  we  have  seen, 
more  than  $130,000,000  went  for  instruction  and 
allied  uses;  $198,748,775  was  the  cost  of  the 
army;  and  $82,362,650  the  cost  of  the  navy, 
not  counting  the  extraordinary  expenditures  for 
these  two  arms  of  the  service,  which  amounted 
to  $5,624,775  for  the  army,  and  $28,183,125  for 
the  navy.  The  total  expenditure  of  the  Father- 
land for  schools,  army,  and  navy  amounted, 
therefore,  to  one-fifth  of  the  total,  or  $416,- 
108,225. 

I  have  grouped  these  expenditures  together 
for  the  reason,  that  I  am  still  one  of  those  who 
remain  distrustful  and  disdainful  of  the  Carnegie 
holy  water,  and  a  firm  believer  that  the  two  best 
schools  in  Germany,  or  anywhere  else  where  they 
are  as  well  conducted  as  there,  are  the  army  and 
the  navy.  Even  if  they  were  not  schools  of  war, 


290     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

they  would  be  an  inestimable  loss  to  the  coun- 
try were  they  no  longer  in  existence  as  manhood- 
training  schools.  This  is  the  more  clear  when  it 
is  remembered  that,  according  to  the  army  stand- 
ard, both  the  German  peasant  and  the  urban 
dweller  are  steadily  deteriorating.  In  ten  years 
the  percentage  of  physically  efficient  men  in  the 
rural  districts  decreased  from  60.5  to  58.2  per 
cent.,  and  this  decrease  is  even  more  marked  in 
particular  provinces.  Infant  mortality,  despite 
better  hygienic  conditions  and  more  education, 
has  not  decreased,  and  in  some  districts  has  in- 
creased; while  the  birth-rate,  especially  in  Prus- 
sia and  Thuringia,  has  fallen  off  as  well.  For  the 
whole  of  Germany,  the  births  to  every  thousand 
of  the  inhabitants  were,  in  1876,  42.63;  in  1891. 
38.25;  in  1905,  34;  and  in  1909,  31.91.  In  Ber- 
lin the  births  per  thousand  in  1907  were  24.63 
and  in  1911  only  20.84. 

The  observer  who  cares  nothing  for  statis- 
tics, who  rambles  about  in  the  district  of  Leip- 
sic,  Chemnitz,  Riesa,  Oschatz,  and  in  the  moun- 
tainous district  of  southeast  Saxony,  may  see 
for  himself  a  population  lacking  in  size,  vigor, 
and  health,  noticeably  so  indeed.  Education  at 
one  end  turning  out  an  unwholesome,  "white- 
collared,  black-coated  proletariat,"  as  the  So- 
cialists call  them;  and  industry  and  commerce, 


which  even  tempt  the  farmer  to  sell  what  he 
should  keep  to  eat,  at  the  other,  are  making 
serious  inroads  upon  the  health  and  well-being 
of  the  population. 

The  Chancellor,  von  Bethmann-Hollweg, 
speaking  in  the  Reichstag  February  11,  1911, 
said:  "The  fear  that  we  may  not  be  working 
along  the  right  lines  in  the  education  of  our 
youth  is  a  cause  of  great  anxiety  to  many  people 
in  Germany.  We  shall  not  solve  this  problem 
by  shunning  it!" 

Many  social  economists  hold  that  higher  edu- 
cation is  unfitting  numbers  of  young  men  from' 
following  the  humbler  pursuits,  while  at  the  same 
time  it  is  not  making  them  as  efficient  as  are 
their  ambitions;  and  such  men  are  recognized  as 
the  most  potent  chemical  in  making  the  milk  of 
human  kindness  to  turn  sour.  At  a  meeting  of 
the  Goethebund  this  year,  advocating  school  re- 
form, it  was  evident  that  many  intelligent  men 
in  Germany  were  not  satisfied  with  present 
methods  of  education,  which  were  characterized 
as  wasting  energy  in  mechanical  methods  of 
teaching,  and  so  robbing  youth  of  its  youth.  It 
is  beginning  to  be  understood  in  Germany,  as  it 
has  been  understood  by  wise  men  in  all  ages, 
that  "to  spend  too  much  time  in  studies  is  sloth: 
to  use  them  too  much  for  ornament  is  affecta- 


292     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

tion;  to  make  judgment  wholly  by  their  rules  is 
the  humour  of  the  scholar."  This  commen- 
tary of  Bacon  should  be  on  the  walls  of  every 
school  and  university  in  Germany.  An  ed- 
ucation can  do  nothing  more  for  a  man  than 
to  make  him  less  fearful  of  what  he  does  not 
know,  and  to  save  him  from  the  vulgarity  of  be- 
ing pre-empted  wholly  by  the  present,  because 
he  knows  something  of  the  past.  You  cannot 
educate  a  man  to  be  a  poet  or  a  preacher  or  a 
pianist;  that  we  know.  We  are  only  just  dis- 
covering that  the  much-lauded  technical  edu- 
cation will  not  make  him  an  engineer  or  a  ship- 
builder or  an  architect.  You  may  give  him  the 
tools  and  the  elementary  rules,  but  the  rest  he 
must  do  himself.  Nine-tenths  of  the  techni- 
cally educated  men  to-day  are  working  for  men 
who  were  liberally  educated,  or  who  educated 
themselves.  Germany  is  producing  a  race  of 
first-rate  clerks  and  skilled  mechanics,  who  are 
working  hard  to  enrich  the  Jews. 

In  America,  it  is  true,  we  have  gone  ahead 
along  educational  lines.  In  1800,  it  is  said,  the 
average  adult  American  had  82  days  of  school 
attendance;  in  1900,  146  days.  In  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  our  secondary  schools  have 
increased  in  number  from  1,400  to  12,000;  and 
during  the  last  eighteen  years  the  proportion  of 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     293 

our  youth  receiving  high-school  instruction  has 
doubled,  and  attendance  at  American  colleges 
has  increased  400  per  cent,  while  the  population 
increased  by  100  per  cent.  But  education  is  by 
no  means  so  strenuous  as  in  Germany.  The 
hours  are  shorter,  holidays  longer,  standards 
lower,  and  the  emphasis  far  less  insistent.  A 
boy  who  has  not  the  mental  energy  to  pass  the 
entrance  examinations  at  Harvard,  for  instance, 
and  proceed  to  a  degree  there,  ought  to  be 
drowned,  or  to  drown  himself.  I  would  not  say 
as  much  of  the  requirements  in  Germany,  for 
they  are  far  more  severe.  Prince  von  Hohenlohe 
in  his  memoirs  gives  an  account  of  a  conversa- 
tion between  the  Emperor,  the  Emperor's  tutor, 
and  himself.  The  Emperor  was  regretting  the 
severity  of  the  examinations  in  the  secondary 
schools,  and  it  was  replied  to  him  that  this  was 
the  only  way  to  prevent  a  flood  of  candidates  for 
the  civil  service! 

There  is  another  all-important  factor  in  Ger- 
many bearing  upon  this  point.  A  boy  must  have 
passed  into  the  upper  section  of  the  class  before 
the  last,  "  Secunda,"  as  it  is  called,  or  have 
passed  an  equivalent  examination,  in  order  to 
serve  one  year  instead  of  three  in  the  army.  To 
be  an  Einjahriger  is,  therefore,  in  a  way  the  mark 
of  an  educated  gentleman.  The  tales  of  suicide 


294     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  despair  of  school-boys  in  Germany  are,  alas, 
too  many  of  them  true;  and  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  not  to  reach  a  certain  standard  here 
means  that  a  man's  way  is  barred  from  the  army 
and  navy,  civil  service,  diplomatic  or  consular 
service,  from  social  life,  in  short.  The  unedu- 
cated man  of  position  in  Germany  does  not  exist, 
cannot  exist.  This  is,  therefore,  no  phantom, 
but  a  real  terror.  The  man  of  twenty -five  who 
has  not  won  an  education  and  a  degree  faces  a 
blank  wall  barring  his  entrance  anywhere;  and 
even  when,  weaponed  with  the  necessary  aca- 
demic passport,  he  is  permitted  to  enter,  he 
meets  with  an  appalling  competition,  which  has 
peopled  Germany  with  educated  inefficients  who 
must  work  for  next  to  nothing,  and  who  keep 
down  the  level  of  the  earnings  of  the  rest  because 
there  is  an  army  of  candidates  for  every  vacant 
position.  On  the  other  hand,  the  industries  of 
Germany  have  bounded  ahead,  because  the 
army  of  chemists  and  physicists  of  patience, 
training,  and  ability,  who  work  for  small  salaries 
provide  them  with  new  and  better  weapons  than 
their  rivals. 

There  are  two  sides  to  this  question  of  fine- 
tooth-comb  education.  Its  advantages  both 
America  and  England  are  seeing  every  day  in 
these  stout  rivals  of  ours;  but  its  disadvantages 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     295 

are  not  to  be  concealed,  and  are  perhaps  doing 
an  undermining  work  that  will  be  more  apparent 
in  the  future  than  now  it  is.  The  very  fact  that 
an  alien,  an  oriental  race,  the  Jews,  have  taken 
so  disproportionate  a  share  of  the  cream  of  Ger- 
man prosperity,  and  have  turned  this  technical 
prowess  to  purposes  of  their  own,  is,  in  and  of 
itself,  a  sure  sign  that  there,  may  be  an  educated 
proletariat  working  slavishly  for  masters  whom, 
with  all  their  learning  and  all  their  mental  dis- 
cipline, they  cannot  force  to  abdicate. 

Strange  to  say,  the  federal  constitution  of 
1871,  which  gave  Germany  its  emperor,  did  not 
include  the  schools,  and  each  state  has  its  own 
school  system,  but  in  1875  an  imperial  school 
commission  was  formed  which  has  done  much  to 
make  the  system  of  all  the  states  uniform. 

The  three  classes  of  schools  recognized  as  lead- 
ing later  to  a  university  career  are  the  Gymna- 
sium, in  which  Latin  and  Greek  are  still  the  fun- 
damental requirements;  the  Realgymnasium,  in 
which  Latin  but  no  Greek  is  required;  the  Ober- 
realschule,  in  which  the  classics  are  not  taught 
at  all,  but  emphasis  is  laid  upon  modern  lan- 
guages and  natural  science.  In  addition  to  these 
there  are  the  so-called  Reformschulen,  of  very 
recent  growth,  which  are  an  attempt  to  put  less 
emphasis  upon  the  classics,  but  without  exclud- 


296    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  them  entirely  from  the  course,  and  to  pay 
more  attention  proportionately  to  modern  lan- 
guages, French  in  particular.  There  are  in  addi- 
tion some  four  hundred  public  and  one  thousand 
or  more  private  higher  girls'  schools,  with  an  at- 
tendance of  a  quarter  of  a  million,  all  subject  to 
state  supervision. 

If  one  were  to  make  a  genealogical  tree  of 
the  German  schools  which  educate  the  children 
from  the  age  of  six  up  to  the  age  of  entrance  to 
the  university,  it  might  be  described  as  follows: 
First  are  the  Volkschulen,  which  every  child 
must  attend  from  six  to  fourteen.  In  the 
smaller  country  schools  the  children  of  all  ages 
may  be  in  one  school-room  and  under  one 
teacher;  in  another,  divided  into  two  classes;  in 
another,  into  three  or  four  classes;  up  to  the 
large  city  schools,  in  which  they  are  divided  on 
account  of  their  number  into  as  many  as  eight 
classes.  Next  would  come  the  Mittelschulen, 
where  the  pupils  are  carried  on  a  year  farther, 
and  where  the  last  year  corresponds  to  the  first 
year  of  the  so-called  Lehrerbildungsanstalten,  or 
training  schools  for  teachers.  These  again  are 
divided  into  two,  one  called  Prceparanda,  the 
other  Seminar,  the  former  carrying  the  pupil  on 
to  his  sixteenth  year,  the  latter  to  the  nineteenth 
year  and  turning  him  out  a  full-fledged  Volk- 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     297 

schule  teacher,  and  giving  him  the  right  to  serve 
only  one  year  in  the  army. 

If  boy  or  girl  goes  on  from  the  fourteenth 
year,  the  hohere  Knabenschulen  and  the  hoh&re 
Mddchenschulen  take  them  on  to  the  eighteenth 
or  nineteenth  year.  Many  boys  go  on  till  they 
have  passed  from  the  lower  Secunda,  next  to  the 
last  class,  which  is  divided  into  upper  and  lower 
Secunda,  into  the  upper  Secunda,  when  their  cer- 
tificate entitles  them  to  serve  one  year  only  in 
the  army,  when  they  quit  school.  Many  boys, 
too,  intending  to  become  officers,  leave  school  at 
sixteen  or  seventeen  and  go  to  regular  cramming 
institutions,  where  they  do  their  work  more 
quickly  and  devote  themselves  to  the  special 
subjects  required.  For  boys  intending  to  go  on 
through  the  higher  schools,  there  are  schools 
taking  them  on  from  the  age  of  nine,  with  a  cur- 
riculum better  adapted  than  that  of  the  Volk- 
schulen  to  that  end. 

In  all  these  higher  schools  there  is  less  atten- 
tion paid  to  mere  examinations,  and  more  atten- 
tion paid  to  the  general  grip  the  pupils  have  on 
the  work  in  hand;  and  of  the  teaching,  as  men- 
tioned elsewhere,  too  much  cannot  be  said  in  its 
praise. 

For  those  boys  who  finish  their  public  school- 
ing at  the  age  of  fourteen  and  then  turn  to  earn- 


298     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  their  living,  there  are  the  continuation 
schools,  which  are  in  many  parts  of  the  country 
compulsory,  and  which  are  nicely  adapted,  ac- 
cording to  their  situation  in  shopkeeping  cit- 
ies, in  factory  towns,  or  in  the  country,  to  give 
the  pupils  the  drilling  and  instruction  necessary 
for  their  particular  employment.  The  average 
amount  of  expenditure  for  these  continuation 
schools  is  $6,250,000.  In  Prussia  there  are  some 
1,500  of  these  schools,  with  an  average  attend- 
ance of  300,000  pupils. 

According  to  the  last  census  the  proportion  of 
illiterates  among  the  recruits  for  the  army  was 
0.02  per  cent.  The  number  of  those  who  could 
neither  read  nor  write  in  Germany  was,  in  1836, 
41.44  per  cent.;  in  1909,  0.01  per  cent.  If  one 
were  to  name  all  the  agricultural  schools;  tech- 
nical schools;  schools  of  architecture  and  build- 
ing; commercial  schools,  for  textile,  wood, 
metal,  and  ceramic  industries;  art  schools; 
schools  for  naval  architecture  and  engineering 
and  navigation;  and  the  public  music  schools,  it 
would  be  seen  that  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  speak 
of  fine-tooth-comb  education. 

I  have  visited  scores  of  all  sorts  of  schools  all 
over  Germany,  from  a  peasant  common  school  in 
Posen  up  to  that  last  touch  in  education,  the 
schools  in  Charlottenburg,  the  Schulpforta  Acad- 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     299 

emy,  and  such  a  private  boys'  school  as  Die 
Schtilerheim-Kolonie  des  Arndt-Gymnasiums  in 
the  Grunewald  near  Berlin,  and  the  training 
schools  for  the  military  cadets.  Through  the 
courtesy  of  the  authorities  I  was  permitted,  when 
I  wished  it,  to  sit  in  the  class-rooms,  and  even  to 
put  questions  to  the  boys  and  girls  in  the  classes. 
From  the  small  boys  and  girls  making  their  first 
efforts  at  spelling  to  the  young  woman  of  seven- 
teen who  translated  a  paragraph  of  the  "Ger- 
mania"  of  Tacitus,  not  into  German  but  into 
French,  for  me  (a  problem  I  offered  as  a  good  test 
of  whether  I  was  merely  assisting  at  a  prepared 
exhibition  of  the  prowess  of  the  class  or  whether 
the  minds  had  been  trained  to  independence), 
I  have  looked  over  a  wide  field  of  teaching  and 
learning  in  Germany.  If  that  young  person  was 
typical  of  the  pupils  of  this  upper  girls'  school, 
there  is  no  doubt  of  their  ability  to  meet  an  in- 
tellectual emergency  of  that  kind. 

Of  one  feature  of  German  education  one  can 
write  without  reservation,  and  that  is  the  teach- 
ing. Everywhere  it  is  good,  often  superlatively 
good,  and  half  a  dozen  times  I  have  listened  to 
the  teaching  of  a  class  in  history,  in  Latin,  in 
German  literature,  in  French  literature,  where  it 
was  a  treat  to  be  a  listener.  I  remember  in 
particular  a  class  in  physical  geography,  another 


300     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

reading  Ovid,  another  reading  Shakespeare,  and 
another  reading  Goethe's  "Hermann  and  Doro- 
thea," where  I  enjoyed  my  half -hour,  as  though 
I  had  been  listening  to  a  distinguished  lecturer 
on  his  darling  subject. 

We  know  how  little  these  men  and  women 
teachers  are  paid,  but  there  is  such  a  flood  of  in- 
tellectual output  in  Germany  that  the  competi- 
tion is  ferocious  in  these  callings,  and  the  schools 
can  pick  and  choose  only  from  those  who  have 
borne  the  severest  tests  with  the  greatest  suc- 
cess. The  teaching  is  so  good  that  it  explains 
in  part  the  amount  of  work  these  poor  children 
are  enabled  to  get  through.  School  begins  at 
seven  in  summer,  at  eight  in  winter.  The 
course  for  those  intending  to  go  to  the  univer- 
sity is  nine  years;  the  recitation  hours  alone 
range  from  twenty-five  to  thirty-two  hours  a 
week;  to  which  must  be  added  two  hours  a  week 
of  singing  and  three  hours  a  week  of  gymnastics, 
and  this  for  forty-two  weeks  in  the  year.  The 
preparation  for  class-work  requires  from  two 
and  a  half  to  four  hours  more.  It  foots  up  to 
something  like  fifty  hours  a  week! 

At  Eton,  in  England,  the  boys  grumble  be- 
cause they  only  have  a  half-holiday  every  other 
day,  and  four  months  of  the  year  vacation.  It 
will  be  interesting  to  see  which  educational 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    301 

method  is  to  produce  the  men  who  are  to  win  the 
next  Waterloo.  No  wonder  that  nearly  seventy 
per  cent,  of  those  who  reach  the  standard  re- 
quired of  those  who  need  serve  only  one  year 
instead  of  three  in  the  army  are  near-sighted, 
and  that  more  than  forty-five  per  cent,  are  put 
on  one  side  as  physically  unfit.  The  increase  in 
population  in  Germany  is  so  great,  however,  and 
the  candidates  for  the  army  so  numerous,  that 
the  authorities  are  far  more  strict  in  those  they 
accept  than  in  France,  for  example.  There  is 
more  manhood  material  for  the  German  army 
and  navy  every  year  than  is  needed. 

In  the  first  year  of  the  nine-years'  course  in  a 
Gymnasium  the  25  hours  a  week  are  divided: 
religion,  3  hours;  German,  4  hours;  Latin,  8 
hours;  geography,  2  hours;  mathematics,  4 
hours;  natural  science,  2  hours;  writing,  2  hours. 
In  the  last  year:  religion,  2  hours;  German,  3 
hours;  Latin,  7  hours;  Greek,  6  hours  —  Greek  is 
begun  in  the  fourth  year;  French,  3  hours  - 
French  is  begun  in  the  third  year;  history,  3 
hours;  mathematics,  4  hours;  natural  science,  2 
hours. 

In  the  first  year  in  a  Realgymnasium:  religion, 
3  hours;  German,  4  hours;  Latin,  8  hours; 
geography,  2  hours;  mathematics,  4  hours;  nat- 
ural science,  2  hours;  writing,  2  hours.  In  the 


302     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

last  year  of  the  course:  religion,  2  hours;  German, 
3  hours;  Latin,  4  hours;  French  —  begun  in 
third  year  —  4  hours ;  English  —  begun  in  fourth 
year  —  3  hours;  mathematics,  5  hours;  natural 
science,  5  hours;  drawing,  2  hours. 

In  the  first  year  in  an  Oberrealschule:  religion, 
3  hours;  German,  5  hours;  French,  6  hours; 
geography,  2  hours;  mathematics,  5  hours;  nat- 
ural science,  2  hours;  writing,  2  hours.  In  the 
last  year:  religion,  2  hours;  German,  4  hours; 
French,  4  hours;  English  —  begun  in  the  fourth 
year  —  4  hours;  history,  3  hours;  geography,  1 
hour;  mathematics,  5  hours;  natural  science,  6 
hours;  free-hand  drawing  —  begun  in  the  second 
year  —  2  hours. 

It  may  be  seen  from  these  schedules  where  the 
emphasis  is  laid  in  each  of  these  schools.  So  far 
as  results  are  concerned,  the  pupils  about  to  leave 
for  the  universities  seemed  to  me  to  know  their 
Latin,  Greek,  French,  German,  and  English,  and 
their  local  and  European  history  well.  Their 
knowledge  of  Latin  and  of  either  French  or  Eng- 
lish, sometimes  of  both,  is  far  superior  to  any- 
thing required  of  a  student  entering  any  college 
or  university  in  America.  I  have  asked  many 
pupils  to  read  passages  at  sight  in  Latin,  French 
and  English  in  schools  in  various  parts  of  Ger- 
many and  there  is  no  question  of  the  grip  they 


have  upon  what  they  have  been  taught.  I  am, 
alas,  not  a  scholar,  and  can  only  judge  of  the  re- 
quirements and  of  the  training  and  its  results 
in  subjects  where  I  am  at  home;  and  I  must  take 
it  for  granted  that  these  boys  and  girls  are  as 
well  trained  in  other  subjects  where  I  am  in- 
capable of  passing  judgment.  It  is  improbable, 
however,  that  the  same  thoroughness  does  not 
characterize  their  work  throughout  the  whole 
curriculum.  The  examination  at  the  end  of  the 
secondary-school  period,  called  Abiturienten- 
examen,  is  more  thorough  and  covers  a  wider 
range  than  any  similar  examination  in  America. 
It  is  a  test  of  intellectual  maturity.  It  permits 
no  gaps,  covers  a  wide  ground,  leaves  no  subject 
dropped  on  the  way,  and  sends  a  man  or  woman 
to  the  university,  with  an  equipment  entirely 
a.dequate  for  such  special  work  as  the  individual 
proposes  to  undertake. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  in  many  class-rooms  the 
ventilation  was  distinctly  bad,  but  here  too  I 
must  admit  an  exaggerated  love  for  fresh  air, 
born  of  my  own  love  of  out-door  exercise. 

There  are  practically  no  schools  in  Germany 
like  the  public  schools  for  boys  in  England,  and 
our  own  private  schools  for  boys,  like  Saint 
Paul's,  Groton,  Saint  Mark's,  and  others,  where 
the  training  of  character  and  physique  are  em- 


304     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

phasized.  Here  again  I  admit  my  prejudice  in 
favor  of  such  education.  I  should  be  made 
pulp,  indeed,  did  I  try  to  run  through  the  boys 
of  a  fifth  or  sixth  form  at  home,  but,  from  the 
look  of  them,  I  would  have  undertaken  it  for  a 
wager  in  Germany. 

It  is  not  their  fault,  poor  boys.  Practically 
the  whole  emphasis  is  laid  upon  drilling  the  mind. 
Moral  and  physical  matters  are  left  to  the  home, 
and  in  the  home  there  are  no  fathers  and  brothers 
interested  in  games  or  sport,  and  in  this  busy, 
competitive  strife,  and  with  the  small  means  at 
the  disposal  of  the  majority,  there  is  no  time  and 
no  opportunity.  Boys  and  girls  seldom  leave 
home  for  distant  boarding-schools.  They  go  from 
home  to  school  and  from  school  home  every  day, 
and  have  none  of  the  advantages  to  be  gained 
from  intercourse  with  men  outside  their  own 
circles.  It  shows  itself  in  a  deplorable  lack  of 
orientation  as  compared  with  our  lads  of  the 
same  relative  standing.  In  dress  and  bearing,  in 
at-homeness  in  the  world,  in  ability  to  take  care 
of  themselves  under  strange  conditions  or  in  an 
emergency,  and  in  domestic  hygiene  they  are  in- 
ferior, and  yet  they  are  so  competent  to  push  the 
national  military,  industrial,  and  commercial  ball 
along  as  men,  that  one  wonders  whether  Bage- 
hot's  gibe  at  certain  well-to-do  classes  of  the 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    305 

Saxons,  that  "they  spend  half  their  time  washing 
their  whole  persons,"  may  not  have  a  grain  of 
truth  in  it. 

Another  feature  of  the  school  life  which  is 
prominent,  especially  in  Prussia,  is  the  incessant 
and  insistent  emphasis  laid  upon  patriotism. 
In  every  school,  almost  in  every  class-room,  is  a 
picture  of  the  Emperor;  in  many,  pictures  also  of 
his  father  and  grandfather.  Even  in  a  municipal 
lodging-house,  where  I  found  some  tiny  waifs 
and  strays  being  taught,  there  were  pictures  of 
the  sovereign,  and  brightly  colored  pictures  of 
the  war  of  1870-71,  generally  with  German  per- 
sonalities on  horseback,  and  the  French  as  pris- 
oners with  bandages  and  dishevelled  clothing. 
This  war,  which  began  with  the  first  movement 
of  the  German  army  on  August  4,  and  on  the  2d 
of  September  next  Napoleon  was  a  prisoner;  this 
war,  in  which  the  German  army  at  the  beginning 
of  operations  consisted  of  384,000  officers  and 
men  and  wrhich  had  grown  during  the  truce  to 
630,000  on  March  1 ;  lost  in  killed  and  those  who 
died  from  wounds  28,278,  of  whom  1,871  were 
officers;  this  war  is  flaunted  at  the  population  of 
Germany  continually,  and  from  every  possible 
angle.  We  hear  very  little  of  our  war  of  1861- 
1865,  that  cost  us  $8,000,000,000  with  killed  and 
wounded  numbering  some  700,000.  We  do  not 


306     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

find  it  necessary  to  feed  our  patriotism  with  a 
nursing-bottle. 

At  a  kindergarten  two  tots,  a  boy  and  a  girl, 
stood  at  the  top  of  some  steps  while  the  rest 
marched  by  and  saluted;  they  later  descended 
and  went  through  the  motions  of  reviewing  the 
others.  They  were  playing  they  were  Kaiser 
and  Kaiserin! 

Two  small  boys  in  a  school-yard  discussing 
their  relative  prowess  as  jumpers  end  the  dis- 
cussion when  one  says  as  a  final  word:  "Oh,  I 
can  jump  as  high  as  the  Kaiser!" 

We  have  noted  in  another  article  how  even 
police  sergeants  must  be  familiar  with  the  history 
of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern. 

I  am  an  admirer  of  Germany  and  her  Emperor, 
with  a  distinct  love  of  discipline  and  a  bias  in 
favor  of  military  training,  and  with  an  experi- 
ence of  actual  warfare  such  as  only  a  score  or 
so  of  German  officers  of  my  generation  have 
had;  but  I  am  bound  to  say  I  found  this  pound- 
ing in  of  patriotism  on  every  side  distinctly  nau- 
seating. Boys  and  girls,  and  men  and  women, 
ought  not  to  need  to  be  pestered  with  patriotism. 
We  had  a  controversy  in  America  some  ten  years 
before  the  Franco-German  War,  where  in  one 
battle  more  men  were  killed  and  wounded  than 
in  all  the  battles  Prussia,  and  later  Germany, 
has  fought  since  1860. 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    307 

In  the  South,  at  any  rate,  we  bear  the  scars 
and  the  mourning  of  those  days  still,  but  nobody 
would  be  thanked  for  pummelling  us  with  patri- 
otism. In  the  skirmish  with  Spain  our  military 
authorities  were  pestered  with  candidates  for  the 
front.  Germany  itself  is  not  more  a  nation  in 
arms  than  America  would  be  at  the  smallest 
threat  of  insult  or  aggression.  But  we  take  those 
things  for  granted.  If  we  have  the  honor  to 
possess  a  medal  or  a  decoration,  the  gentlemen 
among  us  wear  it  only  when  asked  to  do  so,  or 
perhaps  on  the  Fourth  of  July. 

Germany  is  even  now  somewhat  loosely  ce- 
mented together.  Their  leaders  may  feel  that  it 
is  necessary  to  keep  ever  in  the  minds  even  of 
the  children,  that  Germany  is  a  nation  with  an 
Emperor  and  a  victory  over  France,  France  in  po- 
litical rags  and  patches  at  the  time,  behind  them. 

They  even  carry  this  teaching  of  patriotism 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  Germany.  The  All- 
gemeiner  Deutscher  Schulverein  zur  Erhaltung  des 
Deutschtums  im  Auslande,  is  a  society  with  head- 
quarters in  Berlin  devoting  itself  to  the  advance- 
ment of  German  education  all  over  the  world. 
The  society  was  started  privately  in  1886,  and 
is  now  partly  supported  by  the  state.  It  con- 
trols some  sixteen  hundred  centres  for  the  teach- 
ing of  German  and  German  patriotism,  and  Ger- 
man learning.  There  are  such  centres  in  China, 


308     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

South  America,  the  United  States,  Spain,  and 
elsewhere.  They  number  90  in  Europe,  25  in 
Asia,  20  in  Africa,  70  in  Brazil,  40  in  Argentina, 
and  100  in  Australia  and  Canada.  The  society 
is  instrumental  in  having  German  taught  in 
5,000  schools  and  academies  in  the  United  States 
to  600,000  pupils.  The  work  is  not  advertised, 
rather  it  is  concealed  so  far  as  possible,  but  it  is 
looked  upon  as  a  valuable  force  for  the  advance- 
ment of  German  interests  throughout  the  world. 
In  the  schools,  too,  there  is  an  enemy  of  which 
we  know  nothing,  and  that  is  the  active  propa- 
gandism  of  socialism,  which  is  anti-military,  anti- 
monarchical,  and  anti-status  quo.  Leaflets  and 
books  and  pamphlets  are  widely  distributed 
among  the  school  children;  many  of  the  teachers 
are  in  sympathy  with  these  obstructionist  meth- 
ods; and  the  authorities  may  feel  that  they  must 
do  what  they  can  to  combat  this  teaching.  In 
Prussia,  on  every  side,  and  in  the  industrial 
towns  of  Saxony,  one  sees  the  evidence  of  this  im- 
potent discontent  expressing  itself  either  openly 
or  in  surly  malice  of  speech  and  manner.  The 
streets  of  Berlin,  and  of  the  industrial  towns, 
show  this  condition  at  every  turn,  and  when  the 
Reichstag  closes  with  cheers  for  the  Emperor, 
the  Socialist  members  leave  in  a  body  before  that 
loyal  ceremony  takes  place. 


We  in  America  are  brought  up  to  believe  that 
the  best  cure  for  such  maladies  is  to  open  the 
wound,  to  give  freedom  of  speech,  to  let  every 
boy  and  girl  and  man  and  woman  find  out  for 
himself  his  citizen's  path  to  walk  in.  We  have 
no  policemen  on  our  public  platforms,  no  gags  in 
the  mouths  of  our  professors  or  preachers,  no 
lurid  pictures  of  battles,  no  plastering  of  the 
walls  of  our  schools  and  seminaries  with  pictures 
of  our  rulers,  and  withal  our  German  immigrants 
are  perhaps  our  best  and  most  patriotic  citizens. 
In  America  they  think  less  and  do  more,  and 
for  most  men  this  is  the  better  way.  It  makes 
life  very  complicated  to  think  too  much  about  it. 

Self-consciousness  is  the  prince  of  mental  and 
social  diseases,  as  vanity  is  the  princess,  and 
even  self-conscious  patriotism  seems  a  little  un- 
wholesome, not  quite  manly,  and  often  even 
grotesque.  It  is  easy  to  say:  "Die  mihi  si  fueris 
tu  leo,  qualis  eris?"  and  if  one  is  a  person  of  no 
great  importance,  it  is  an  embarrassing  question 
to  answer.  In  this  connection  I  can  only  say 
that  I  should  assume  that  my  lionhood  was 
taken  for  granted  without  so  much  roaring, 
bristling  of  the  mane,  and  switching  of  the  tail. 
It  irritates  those  who  are  discontented,  it  posi- 
tively infuriates  the  redder  democrats,  and  it 
bores  the  children,  and,  worst  of  all,  proclaims  to 


310     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

everybody  that  the  lion  is  not  quite  comfortable 
and  at  his  ease.  The  German  lion  is  a  fine,  big 
fellow  now,  with  fangs,  and  teeth,  and  claws  as 
serviceable  as  need  be,  and  it  only  makes  him 
appear  undignified  to  be  forever  looking  at  him- 
self in  the  looking-glass. 

Whatever  may  be  the  right  or  wrong  of 
these  comparative  methods  of  training,  Germans 
trained  in  the  investigation  of  such  matters  agree 
in  telling  me  that  the  boys  who  come  up  to  the 
universities,  especially  in  the  large  cities  and 
towns,  are  somewhat  lax  in  their  moral  standards 
as  regards  matters  upon  which  the  puritan  still 
lays  great  stress. 

In  Berlin  particularly,  where  there  are  some 
thirty-five  hundred  registered  and  nearly  fifty 
thousand  unregistered  women  devoting  them- 
selves to  the  seemingly  incompatible  ends  of 
rapidly  accumulating  gold  while  frantically  pur- 
suing pleasure,  there  is  an  amount  of  immorality 
unequalled  in  any  capital  in  Europe.  In  the 
whole  German  Empire  the  average  of  illegiti- 
macy is  ten  per  cent,  but  in  Berlin  the  average 
for  the  last  few  years  is  twenty  per  cent.  Out  of 
every  five  children  born  in  Berlin  each  year  one 
is  illegitimate!  It  is  questionable  whether  the 
increasing  demands  of  the  army  and  navy  re- 
quire such  laxity  of  moral  methods  in  providing 
therefor. 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    311 

There  is,  however,  a  state  church  in  Germany 
with  its  head  in  Berlin,  and  no  doubt  we  may 
safely  leave  this  matter  in  these  better  hands 
than  ours.  I  beg  to  say  that  in  mentioning  this 
subject  I  am  quoting  unprejudiced  scientific  in- 
vestigators, who,  I  may  say,  agree,  without  a 
dissenting  voice  of  importance,  that  Berlin  has 
become  the  classical  problem  along  such  lines. 
In  the  endeavor  to  compete  with  the  gayeties 
elsewhere,  a  laxity  has  been  encouraged  and  per- 
mitted that  has  won  for  Berlin  in  the  last  ten 
years,  an  unrivalled  position  as  a  purveyor  of 
after-dark  pleasures.  Berlin  not  only  produces 
a  disproportionate  number  of  such  people  as 
Diotrephes,  in  manners,  but  also  a  veritable 
horde  of  those  who  are  like  unto  the  son  of 
Bosor. 

After  the  sheltered  home  life  and  the  severe 
discipline  of  the  higher  schools,  a  German  youth 
is  permitted  a  freedom  unknown  to  us  at  the 
university.  There  is  no  record  kept  of  how  or 
where  he  spends  his  time.  He  matriculates  at 
one  or  another  of  the  universities,  and  for  three, 
four,  or,  in  the  case  of  medical  students,  five 
years,  he  is  free  to  work  or  not  to  work,  as  he 
pleases. 

There  are,  however,  three  factors  that  serve 
as  bit  and  reins  to  keep  him  in  order.  The  final 
examination  is  severe,  thorough,  and  cannot  be 


312    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

passed  successfully  by  mere  cramming;  very  few 
of  the  students  have  incomes  which  permit  of  a 
great  range  of  dissipation;  and  not  to  pass  the 
examination  is  a  terrible  defeat  in  life,  which 
cuts  a  man  off  from  further  progress  and  leaves 
him  disgraced. 

These  are  forces  that  count,  and  which  prevail 
to  keep  all  but  the  least  serious  within  bounds. 
German  life  as  a  whole  is  so  disciplined,  so  fitted 
together,  so  impossible  to  break  into  except 
through  the  recognized  channels,  that  few  men 
have  the  optimistic  elasticity  of  mind  and  spir- 
its, the  demonic  confidence  in  themselves,  that 
overrides  such  considerations. 

We  in  America  suffer  from  a  superabundance 
of  men  of  aleatory  dispositions,  men  who  love 
to  play  cards  with  the  devil,  who  rejoice  to 
wager  their  future,  their  reputation,  their  lives, 
against  the  world.  I  admit  a  sneaking  fondness 
for  them.  They  are  a  great  asset,  and  a  new 
country  needs  them,  but  if  we  have  too  many, 
Germany  has  too  few.  They  are  forever  crying 
out  in  Germany  for  another  Bismarck.  When- 
ever in  political  matters,  in  foreign  affairs,  even 
in  their  religious  controversies,  things  go  wrong, 
men  lift  their  hands  and  eyes  to  heaven  and  say, 
"How  different  if  Bismarck  were  here!"  Bis- 
marck and  two  of  his  predecessors  as  nation- 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     313 

builders  were  not  afraid  to  throw  dice  with  the 
world,  and  what  "the  land  of  damned  profess- 
ors" could  not  do,  they  did. 

When  the  young  men  from  the  Gymnasium 
come  into  the  freedom  of  university  life,  they 
toss  their  heads  a  bit,  kick  up  their  heels,  laugh 
long  and  loud  at  the  Philistine,  but  just  as  every 
German  climax  is  incomplete  without  tears,  so 
they  too  are  soon  singing:  "Ich  weiss  nicht  wras 
soil  es  bedeuten  dass  ich  so  traurig  bin!"  the 
gloom  of  the  Teutoburger  Wald  settles  down  on 
them,  and  they  buckle  to  and  work  with  an 
enduring  patience  such  as  few  other  men  in  the 
world  display,  and  join  the  great  army  here 
who,  bitted  and  harnessed,  are  pulling  the  Vater- 
land  to  the  front. 

The  British  Empire  between  1800  and  1910 
grew  from  1,500,000  square  miles  to  11,450,000 
square  miles,  and  its  trade  from  $400,000,000 
to  $11,020,000,000;  not  to  mention  the  United 
States  of  America,  now  considered  to  be  of 
noticeable  importance,  though  we  are  universally 
sneered  at  by  the  Germans,  to  an  extent  that  no 
American  dreams  of  who  has  not  lived  among 
them,  as  a  land  of  dollars,  and,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  book-learning,  dullards.  But  it  is 
this,  none  the  less,  that  Germany  envies,  and 
has  set  out  to  rival  and  if  possible  to  surpass. 


314     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

No  wonder  the  training  must  be  severe  for  the 
athletes  who  propose  to  themselves  such  a  task. 

For  a  semester  or  two,  perhaps  for  three,  the 
German  student  gives  himself  up  to  the  rollick- 
ing freedom  of  the  corps  student's  life.  That 
life  is  so  completely  misunderstood  by  the  for- 
eigner that  it  deserves  a  few  words  of  explana- 
tion. 

I  am  not  yet  old  enough  to  envy  youth,  nor 
sourly  sophisticated  enough  to  deal  sarcastically 
or  even  lightly  with  their  worship  and  their 
creeds,  that  once  I  shared,  and  with  which  lately 
I  have  been,  under  the  most  hospitable  circum- 
stances, invited  to  renew  my  acquaintance  at  the 
Commers  and  the  Mensur. 

One  may  be  no  longer  a  constant  worshipper 
at  the  shrine  of  blue  eyes,  pink  cheeks,  flaxen 
hair,  and  the  enshrouding  mystery  of  skirts, 
which  make  for  curiosity  and  reverence  in  youth ; 
one  may  have  learned,  however,  the  far  more 
valuable  lesson  that  the  best  women  are  so  much 
nobler  than  the  best  men,  that  the  best  men 
may  still  kneel  to  the  best  women;  just  as  the 
worst  women  surpass  the  worst  men  in  con- 
sciencelessness,  brutal  selfishness,  disloyalty, 
and  degradation.  The  female  bandit  in  society, 
or  frankly  on  the  war-path  outside,  takes  her 
weapons  from  an  armory  of  foulness  and  cruelty 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     315 

unknown  to  men;  just  as  the  heroines  and  angels 
among  women  fortify  themselves  in  sanctuaries 
to  which  few,  if  any,  men  have  the  key. 

One  returns,  therefore,  to  the  playground  of 
one's  youth  with  not  less  but  with  more  sympa- 
thy and  understanding.  Far  from  being  "bru- 
talizing guilds,"  far  from  being  mere  unions  for 
Swilling  and  slashing,  the  German  corps,  by  their 
codes,  and  discipline,  and  standards  of  manners 
and  honor,  are,  from  the  chivalrous  point  of 
view,  the  leaven  of  German  student  life.  In 
these  days  many  of  them  have  club-houses  of 
their  own,  where  they  take  their  meals  in  some 
cases  and  where  they  meet  for  their  beer-drink- 
ing ceremonies. 

There  is  of  course  a  wide  range  of  expenditure 
by  students  at  the  German  universities,  whether 
they  are  members  of  the  corps  or  not.  At  one 
of  the  smaller  universities  in  a  country  town  like 
Marburg,  for  example,  a  poor  student,  with  a 
little  tutoring  and  the  system  of  frei  Tisch  — 
money  left  for  the  purpose  of  giving  a  free  mid- 
day meal  to  poor  students  —  may  scrape  along 
with  an  expenditure  of  as  little  as  twenty  dollars 
a  month.  A  member  of  a  good  corps  at  this 
same  university  is  well  content  with,  and  can  do 
himself  well  on,  seventy  dollars  a  month.  I 
have  seen  numbers  of  students'  rooms,  with  bed, 


316     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

writing-table,  and  simple  furniture,  perhaps  with 
a  balcony  where  for  many  months  in  the  year 
one  may  write  and  read,  which  rent  for  sixty 
dollars  a  year.  One  may  say  roughly  that  at  the 
universities  outside  the  large  towns,  and  not  in- 
cluding the  fashionable  universities,  such  as 
Bonn  or  Heidelberg,  the  student  gets  on  com- 
fortably with  fifty  dollars  a  month.  They  have 
their  coffee  and  rolls  in  the  morning,  their  mid- 
day meal  which  they  take  together  at  a  restau- 
rant, and  their  supper  of  cold  meats,  preserves, 
cheese,  and  beer  where  they  will.  For  seventy- 
five  cents  a  day  a  student  can  feed  himself. 

The  hours  are  Aristotelian,  for  it  was  Aristotle 
in  his  "Economics,"  and  not  a  nursery  rhymer, 
who  wrote:  "It  is  likewise  well  to  rise  before 
daybreak,  for  this  contributes  to  health,  wealth, 
and  wisdom."  "Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise" 
is  a  classic. 

At  Bonn,  a  member  of  one  of  the  three  more 
fashionable  corps  spends  far  more  than  these 
sums,  and  his  habits  may  be  less  Spartan.  The 
ridiculous  expenditure  of  some  of  our  mamma- 
bred  undergraduates,  who  go  to  college  primarily 
to  cultivate  social  relations,  are  unknown  any- 
where in  Germany,  for  a  student  would  make 
himself  unpopularly  conspicuous  by  extrava- 
gance. Two  to  three  thousand  dollars  a  year, 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     317 

even  at  Bonn,  as  a  member  of  the  best  corps, 
would  be  amply  sufficient  and  is  considered  an 
extravagant  expenditure. 

When  the  Earl  of  Essex  was  sent  to  Cam- 
bridge in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  he  was  pro- 
vided with  a  deal  table  covered  with  baize,  a 
truckle-bed,  half  a  dozen  chairs,  and  a  wash- 
hand  basin.  The  cost  of  all  this  was  about  $25. 
When  students  from  all  over  Europe  tramped 
to  Paris  to  hear  Abelard  lecture,  they  begged 
their  way.  They  were  given  special  licenses  as 
scholars  to  beg.  Learning  then,  as  it  is  still  in 
Germany,  alone  of  all  the  nations,  was  con- 
sidered to  be  a  pious  profession  deserving  well 
of  the  world.  We  do  not  even  know  the  names 
of  our  scholars  in  America.  How  many  Amer- 
icans have  heard  of  Gibbs,  the  authority  on  the 
fundamental  laws  regulating  the  trend  of  trans- 
formation in  chemical  and  physical  processes, 
or  of  Hill  and  his  theory  of  the  moon,  or  of  Hale 
who  explains  the  mystery  of  sun  spots  and  meas- 
ures the  magnetic  forces  that  play  around  the 
sun?  How  many  Frenchmen  know  Pierron's 
translation  of  JEschylus,  or  Patin's  studies  in 
Greek  tragedies,  or  Charles  Maguin,  or  Maurice 
Croiset,  or  Paul  Magou  or  Leconte  de  Lisle? 
while  in  England  the  mass  of  the  people  not 
only  do  not  know  the  names  of  their  scholars, 


318     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

but  distrust  all  mental  processes  that  are  super- 
canine. 

The  origin  of  the  Landsmannschaften,  Bursch- 
enschaften, and  the  Corps  among  the  students 
dates  back  to  the  days  when  the  students 
aligned  themselves  with  more  rigidity  than  now, 
according  to  the  various  German  states  from 
which  they  came.  The  names  of  the  corps  still 
bear  this  suggestion,  though  nowadays  the  align- 
ment is  rather  social  than  geographical.  The 
Burschenschaften  societies  of  students  had  their 
origin  in  political  opposition  to  this  separation 
of  the  students  into  communities  from  the  vari- 
ous states.  The  originators  of  the  Burschen- 
schaften movement,  for  example,  were  eleven 
students  at  Jena.  Sobriety  and  chastity  were 
conditions  of  entrance,  and  "Honor,  Liberty, 
Fatherland"  were  their  watchwords.  It  was 
deemed  a  point  of  honor  that  a  member  breaking 
his  vows  should  confess  and  retire  from  the 
society. 

The  societies  of  the  Burschenschaften  are  still 
considered  to  have  a  political  complexion  and 
the  corps  proper  have  no  dealings  with  them. 

In  any  given  semester  the  number  of  students 
in  one  of  these  corps  varies  from  as  few  as  ten, 
to  as  many  as  twenty-five,  depending,  much  as 
do  our  Greek-letter  societies  and  college  clubs, 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    319 

upon  the  number  of  available  men  coming  up  to 
the  university.  Certain  corps  are  composed  al- 
most exclusively  of  noblemen,  but  none  is  dis- 
tinctly a  rich  man's  club. 

An  active  member  of  a  corps  during  his  first 
two  semesters  may  do  a  certain  amount  of  seri- 
ous work,  but  as  a  rule  it  is  looked  upon  as  a 
time  "to  loaf  and  invite  one's  soul,"  and  little  at- 
tempt is  made  to  do  more.  Not  a  few  men 
whom  I  have  known,  have  not  even  entered 
a  class-room  during  the  two  or  three  semesters 
of  this  blossoming  period. 

I  have  spent  many  days  and  nights  with  these 
young  gentlemen,  at  Heidelberg,  at  Leipsic,  at 
Marburg,  at  Bonn,  and  been  made  one  of  them 
in  their  jollity  and  good-fellowship,  and  I  have 
agreed,  and  still  agree,  that  "Wir  sind  die  Ko- 
nige  der  Welt,  wir  sind's  durch  unsere  Freude." 

They  are  by  no  means  the  swashbuckling, 
bullying,  dissolute  companions  painted  by  those 
who  know  nothing  about  them.  They  may 
drink  more  beer  than  we  deem  necessary  for 
health,  or  even  for  comfort;  and  they  may  take 
their  exercise  with  a  form  of  sword  practice  that 
we  do  not  esteem,  they  may  be  proud  of  the 
scars  of  these  imitation  duels,  but  these  are  all 
matters  of  tradition  and  taste. 

When  one  writes  of  eating  and  drinking,  it  is 


hardly  fair  to  make  comparisons  from  a  personal 
stand-point.  An  adult  of  average  weight  re- 
quires each  day  125  grams  of  proteid  or  building 
material,  500  grams  of  carbohydrates,  50  grams 
of  fat.  This  equals,  in  common  parlance,  one 
pound  of  bread,  one-half  pound  of  meat,  one- 
quarter  pound  of  fat,  one  pound  of  potatoes,  one- 
half  pint  of  milk,  one-quarter  pound  of  eggs, 
assuming  that  one  egg  equals  two  ounces,  and 
one-eighth  pound  of  cheese.  Divided  into  three 
meals,  this  means:  for  breakfast,  two  slices  of 
bread  and  butter  and  two  eggs;  for  dinner:  one 
plateful  potato  soup,  large  helping  of  meat  with 
fat,  four  moderate-sized  potatoes,  one  slice  bread 
and  butter;  for  tea:  one  glass  of  milk  and  two 
slices  of  bread  and  butter;  for  supper:  two  slices 
of  bread  and  butter  and  two  ounces  of  cheese. 

Plain  white  bread  supplies  more  caloric,  or 
energy,  for  the  price  than  any  other  one  food, 
and,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  more  proteid, 
or  building  material,  than  any  other  one  food. 

One  to  one  and  a  half  fluid  ounces  of  alcohol 
is  about  the  amount  which  can  be  completely 
oxidized  in  the  body  in  a  day.  This  quantity  is 
contained  in  two  fluid  ounces  of  brandy  or  whis- 
key, five  fluid  ounces  of  port  or  sherry,  ten  of 
claret  or  champagne  or  other  light  wines,  and 
twenty  of  bottled  beer.  All  this  means  that  a 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    321 

pint  of  claret,  or  two  glasses  of  champagne,  or  a 
bottle  of  beer,  or  a  glass  of  whiskey  with  some 
aerated  water  during  the  day  will  not  hurt  a 
man,  and  adds  perhaps  to  the  "  agreeableness  of 
life,"  as  Matthew  Arnold  phrases  it.  At  any 
rate,  this  table  of  contents  is  a  much  safer  stand- 
ard of  comparison,  in  judging  the  eating  and 
drinking  habits  of  other  people,  than  either  your 
habits  or  mine. 

The  German  student  probably  drinks  too 
much,  and  it  is  said  by  safe  authorities  in  Ger- 
many that  his  heart,  liver,  and  kidneys  suffer; 
but  he  has  been  at  it  a  long  time,  and  in  certain 
fields  of  intellectual  prowess  he  is  still  supreme, 
and  as  we  only  drink  with  him  now  occasionally 
when  he  is  our  host,  perhaps  he  had  best  be  left 
to  settle  these  questions  without  our  criticism. 

In  general  terms,  I  have  always  considered,  as 
a  test  of  myself  and  others,  that  a  healthy  man  is 
one  who  lies  down  at  night  without  fear,  rises  in 
the  morning  cheerfully,  goes  to  a  day's  serious 
work  of  some  kind  rejoicing  in  the  prospect, 
meets  his  friends  gayly,  and  loves  his  loves  bet- 
ter than  himself. 

It  is  folly  to  maintain,  that  it  does  not  require 
pluck  and  courage  to  stand  up  to  a  swinging 
Schlager,  and  take  your  punishment  without 
flinching,  and  then  to  sit  without  a  murmur 


322     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

while  your  wounds  are  sewn  up  and  bandaged. 
I  cannot  help  my  preference  for  foot-ball,  or 
base-ball,  or  rowing,  or  a  cross-country  run  with 
the  hounds,  or  grouse  or  pheasant  shooting,  or 
the  shooting  of  bigger  game,  or  the  driving  of 
four  horses,  or  the  handling  of  a  boat  in  a  breeze 
of  wind,  but  the  "world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of 
things"  that  he  has  more  audacity  than  I  who 
proposes  to  weigh  them  all  in  the  scales  of  his 
personal  experience,  and  then  to  mark  them  with 
their  relative  values. 

First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  these 
Schldger  contests  between  students  are  in  no 
sense  duels;  a  duel  being  the  setting  by  one  man 
of  his  chance  of  life  against  another's  chance, 
both  with  deadly  weapons  in  their  hands.  These 
contests  with  the  Schldger  at  the  German  uni- 
versities, wrongly  called  duels,  are  so  conducted 
that  there  is  no  possibility  of  permanent  or  even 
very  serious  injury  to  the  combatants.  The 
attendants  who  put  them  into  their  fighting 
harness,  the  doctors  who  look  after  them  during 
the  contest  and  who  care  for  them  afterward, 
are  old  hands  at  the  game,  and  no  mistakes  are 
made. 

There  is  no  feeling  of  animosity  between  the 
swordsmen  as  a  rule.  They  are  merely  candi- 
dates for  promotion  in  their  own  corps  who 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    323 

meet  candidates  from  other  corps,  and  prove 
their  skill  and  courage  auf  die  Mensur,  or  fight- 
ing-ground. 

When  a  youth  joins  a  corps  he  chooses  a  coun- 
sellor and  friend,  a  Leibbursch,  as  he  is  called, 
from  among  the  older  men,  whose  special  care  it 
is,  to  see  to  it  that  he  behaves  himself  properly 
in  his  new  environment;  he  pledges  himself  to 
respect  the  traditions  and  standards  of  the  corps, 
and  to  keep  himself  worthy  of  respect  among  his 
fellows,  and  among  those  whom  he  meets  out- 
side. A  companionship  and  guardianship  not  un- 
like this,  used  to  exist  in  the  Greek-letter  society 
to  which  I  once  belonged.  He  of  course  abides 
by  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  order.  It  is 
a  time  of  freedom  in  one  sense,  but  it  is  a  free- 
dom closely  guarded,  and  there  is  rigid  disci- 
pline here  as  in  practically  all  other  depart- 
ments of  life  in  Germany. 

The  young  students,  or  Fiichse,  as  they  are 
called,  are  instructed  in  the  way  they  should  go 
by  the  older  students,  or  Burschen,  whose  au- 
thority is  absolute.  This  authority  extends  even 
to  the  people  whom  they  may  know  and  consort 
with,  either  in  the  university  or  in  the  town,  and 
to  all  questions  of  personal  behavior,  debts,  dis- 
sipation, manners,  and  general  bearing.  In 
many  of  the  corps  there  are  high  standards  and 


324     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

old  traditions  as  regards  these  matters,  and  every 
member  must  abide  by  them.  Every  corps  stu- 
dent is  a  patriot,  ready  to  sing  or  fight  for 
Kaiser  and  Vaterland,  and  socialism,  even  criti- 
cism of  his  country  or  its  rulers,  are  as  out  of 
place  among  them  as  in  the  army  or  navy. 
They  are  particular  as  to  the  men  whom  they 
admit,  and  a  man's  lineage  and  bearing  and  rela- 
tions with  older  members  of  the  corps  are  care- 
fully canvassed  before  he  is  admitted  to  member- 
ship. Both  the  present  Emperor  and  one  of  his 
sons  have  been  members  of  a  corps. 

Let  us  spend  a  day  with  them.  It  is  Saturday. 
We  get  up  rather  late,  having  turned  in  late  after 
the  Commers  of  Friday,  when  the  men  who  are 
to  fight  the  next  day  were  drunk  to,  sung  to,  and 
wished  good  fortune  on  the  morrow,  and  sent 
home  early.  The  trees  are  turning  green  at 
Bonn,  the  shrubs  are  feeling  the  air  with  hesi- 
tating blossoms,  you  walk  out  into  the  sunshine 
as  gay  as  a  lark,  for  the  champagne  and  the  beer 
of  the  night  before  were  good,  and  you  sang  away 
the  fumes  of  alcohol  before  you  went  to  bed. 
There  was  much  laughter,  and  a  speech  or  two 
of  welcome  for  the  guest,  responded  to  at  1  A.  M. 
in  German,  French,  English,  and  gestures  with  a 
beer-mug,  and  punctuated  with  the  appreciative 
comments  of  the  company. 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS     325 

It  was  a  time  to  slough  off  twenty  years  or  so 
and  let  Adam  have  his  chance,  and  the  company 
was  of  gentlemen  who  sympathize  with  and  un- 
derstand the  "Alter  Herr,"  and  are  only  too  de- 
lighted if  he  will  let  the  springs  of  youth  bubble 
and  sparkle  for  them,  and  glad  to  encourage  him 
to  return  to  reminiscences  of  his  prowess  in  love 
and  war,  and  ready  to  pledge  him  in  bumper 
after  bumper  success  in  the  days  to  come.  You 
might  think  it  a  carouse.  Far  from  it. 

The  ceremony  is  presided  over  by  a  stern 
young  gentleman,  who  never  for  a  moment  al- 
lows any  member  of  the  company  to  get  out  of 
hand,  and  who,  when  a  speech  is  to  be  made, 
makes  it  with  grace  and  complete  ease  of  manner. 
Indeed,  these  young  fellows  surprise  one  with 
their  easy  mastery  of  the  art  of  speech-making. 
Even  the  spokesman  for  the  Fuchse,  or  younger 
students,  at  the  lower  end  of  the  table,  rises  and 
pledges  himself  and  his  companions  in  a  few 
graceful  words,  with  certain  sly  references  to  the 
possibility  that  the  guest  may  not  have  lost  his 
appreciation  of  the  charms  of  German  woman- 
kind, which  the  guest  in  question  here  and  now, 
and  frankly  admits;  but  not  a  word  of  coarse- 
ness, not  a  hint  that  totters  on  the  brink  of  an 
indiscretion,  and  what  higher  praise  can  one  give 
to  speech-making  on  such  an  occasion! 


326     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

My  particular  host  and  introducer  to  his  old 
corps  is  youngest  of  all,  and  though  seemingly  as 
lavish  in  his  potations  as  any  one,  sings  his  way 
home  with  me,  head  as  clear,  legs  as  steady,  eyes 
as  bright,  as  though  it  were  10  A.  M.  and  not 
2  A.  M.,  and  as  though  I  had  not  seemed  to  see 
his  face  during  most  of  the  evening  through  the 
bottom  of  a  beer-mug. 

That  was  the  night  before.  The  next  morning 
we  stroll  over  to  the  room  where  the  Schldger 
contests  are  to  take  place.  It  is  packed  with  stu- 
dents in  their  different-colored  caps.  Beer  there 
is,  of  course,  but  no  smoking  allowed  till  the 
bouts  are  over. 

I  go  down  to  see  the  men  dressing  for  the  fray. 
They  strip  to  the  waist,  put  on  a  loose  half -shirt 
half -jacket  of  cotton  stuff,  then  a  heavily  padded 
half-jerkin  that  covers  them  completely  from 
chin  to  knee.  The  throat  is  wrapped  round  and 
round  with  heavy  silk  bandages.  The  right  arm 
and  hand  are  guarded  with  a  glove  and  a  heavily 
padded  leather  sleeve;  all  these  impervious  to 
any  sword  blow.  The  eyes  are  guarded  with  steel 
spectacle  frames  fitted  with  thick  glass.  Noth- 
ing is  exposed  but  the  face  and  the  top  of  the 
head.  The  exposed  parts  are  washed  with  anti- 
septics, as  are  also  the  swords,  repeatedly  during 
the  bout.  The  sword,  hilt  and  blade  together, 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    327 

measures  one  hundred  and  five  centimetres. 
There  is  a  heavy,  well-guarded  hilt,  and  a  pliable 
blade  with  a  square  end,  sharp  as  a  razor  on 
both  edges  for  some  six  inches  from  the  end. 

The  position  in  the  sword-play  is  to  face 
squarely  one's  opponent,  the  sword  hand  well 
over  the  head  with  the  blade  held  down  over  the 
left  shoulder.  The  distance  between  the  com- 
batants is  measured  by  placing  the  swords  be- 
tween them  lengthwise,  each  one  with  his  chest 
against  the  hilt  of  his  own  weapon,  and  this 
marks  the  proper  distance  between  them.  When 
they  are  brought  in  and  face  one  another,  the 
umpire,  with  a  bow,  explains  the  situation.  The 
two  seconds  with  swords  crouch  each  beside  his 
man,  ready  to  throw  up  the  swords  and  stop  the 
fighting  between  each  bout.  Two  other  men 
stand  ready  to  hold  the  rather  heavily  weighted 
sword  arm  of  their  comrade  on  the  shoulder  dur- 
ing the  pauses.  Two  others  with  cotton  dipped  in 
an  antiseptic  preparation  keep  the  points  of  the 
swords  clean.  Still  another  official  keeps  a  rec- 
ord in  a  book,  of  each  cut  or  scratch,  the  length 
of  time,  the  number  of  bouts,  and  the  result. 
The  doctor  decides  when  a  wound  is  bad  enough 
to  close  the  contest. 

At  the  word  "Los!"  the  blades  sing  and 
whistle  in  the  air,  the  work  being  done  almost 


328     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

wholly  with  the  wrist,  some  four  blows  are  ex- 
changed, there  is  a  pause,  then  at  it  again,  till 
the  allotted  number  of  bouts  are  over,  or  one  or 
the  other  has  been  cut  to  the  point  where  the 
doctor  decides  that  there  shall  be  no  more.  We 
follow  them  downstairs  again,  where,  after  being 
carefully  washed,  the  combatants  are  seated  in 
a  chair  one  after  the  other,  their  friends  crowd 
around  and  count  the  stitches  as  the  surgeon 
works,  and  comment  upon  what  particular  twist 
of  the  wrist  produced  such  and  such  a  gash. 

I  have  seen  scores  of  these  contests,  and  during 
the  last  year  as  many  as  a  dozen  or  more.  There 
is  no  record  of  any  one  ever  having  been  seriously 
injured;  indeed,  I  doubt  if  there  are  not  more 
men  injured  by  too  much  beer  than  too  much 
sword-play. 

It  is  perhaps  expected  that  the  foot-ball  player 
should  sneer  at  bull-fighting;  the  boxer  at 
fencing;  the  rider  to  hounds  at  these  Schldger 
bouts;  and  that  we  game-players  should  say  con- 
temptuous things  of  the  contests  of  our  neigh- 
bors. Personally,  if  one  could  eliminate  the 
horse  from  the  contest,  I  go  so  far  as  to  believe 
that  even  bull-fighting  is  better  than  no  game 
at  all.  As  for  these  Schldger  contests,  they  seem 
to  me  no  more  brutal  than  our  own  foot-ball, 
which  is  only  brutal  to  the  shivering  crowd  of 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    329 

the  too  tender  who  have  never  played  it,  and 
not  so  dangerous  as  polo  or  pig-sticking,  and  a 
thousand  times  better  than  no  contest  at  all. 

I  am  not  of  those  who  believe  that  the  human 
body  and  that  human  life  are  the  most  precious 
and  valuable  things  in  the  world.  They  are  only 
servants  of  the  courageous  hearts  and  pure  souls 
that  ought  to  be  their  masters.  Without  train- 
ing, without  obedience,  without  the  instant  will- 
ingness to  sacrifice  themselves  for  their  masters, 
the  human  body  and  human  life  are  contemptible 
and  unworthy.  I  claim  that  it  braces  the  mind 
to  expose  the  body ;  that  an  education  in  the  pre- 
pared emergencies  of  games  and  sport,  is  the  best 
training  for  the  unprepared  emergencies  with 
which  life  is  strewn. 

The  most  cruel  people  I  have  ever  known  were 
gentle  enough  physically,  but  they  were  hard 
and  sour  in  their  social  relations,  and  often 
enough  called  "  good  "  by  their  fellows.  The  dis- 
appointments, losses,  sorrows,  defeats,  of  each 
one  of  us,  trouble,  even  though  imperceptibly, 
the  waters  of  life  that  we  all  must  drink  of;  and 
to  ignore  or  to  rejoice  at  these  misfortunes  is  only 
muddying  what  we  ourselves  must  drink.  I  be- 
lieve the  hardening  of  the  body  goes  some  way 
toward  softening  the  heart  and  cleansing  the 
soul,  and  toward  fitting  a  man  with  that  cheerful 


330     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

charity  that  supplies  the  oil  of  intercourse  in  a 
creaking  world  of  rival  interests. 

To  see  a  youth  swinging  a  sword  at  his  fellow's 
face  with  delighted  energy;  to  see  a  man  riding 
off  vigorously  at  polo;  to  see  a  man  hard  at  it 
with  the  gloves  on;  to  see  another  flinging  him- 
self and  his  horse  over  a  wall  or  across  a  ditch; 
to  see  a  man  taking  his  nerves  in  hand,  to  make 
a  two-yard  put  for  a  half,  when  he  is  one  down 
and  two  to  play;  to  see  these  things  without 
seeing  that  —  perhaps  often  enough  in  a  muddy 
sort  of  way  —  the  soul  is  making  a  slave  of 
the  body,  that  courage  is  mastering  cowardice, 
that  in  an  elementary  way  the  youth  is  learn- 
ing how  to  give  himself  generously  when  some 
great  emergency  calls  upon  him  to  give  his 
life  for  an  ideal,  a  tradition,  a  duty,  is  to  see 
nothing  but  brutality,  I  admit.  Who  does  not 
know  that  the  Carthaginians  at  Cannae  were  one 
thing,  the  Carthaginians  at  Capua  another!  I 
have  therefore  no  acidulous  effeminacy  to  pour 
upon  these  German  Schldger  bouts.  I  prefer 
other  forms  of  exercise,  but  I  am  a  hardened 
believer  in  the  manhood  bred  of  contests,  and 
though  their  ways  are  not  my  ways,  I  prefer 
a  world  of  slashed  faces  to  a  world  of  soft 
ones. 

Prosit,  gentlemen!     Better  your  world  than 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    331 

the  world  of  Semitic  haggling  and  exchange;  of 
caution  and  smoothness;  of  the  disasters  born  of 
daintiness;  of  sliding  over  the  ship's  side  in 
women's  clothes  to  live,  when  it  was  a  moral 
duty  to  be  drowned.  Better  your  world  than 
any  such  worlds  as  those,  for 

"If  one  should  dream  that  such  a  world  began 
In  some  slow  devil's  heart  that  hated  man, 
Who  should  deny  it?" 

Milton  held  that  "a  complete  and  generous 
education  fits  a  man  to  perform  justly,  skilfully, 
and  magnanimously  all  the  offices,  both  private 
and  public,  of  peace  and  war."  It  is  my  opinion 
that  the  Schldger  has  its  part  to  play  in  this 
matter  of  education.  A  mind  trained  to  the 
keenness  of  a  razor's  edge,  but  without  a  sound 
body  controlled  by  a  steel  will,  is  of  small  ac- 
count in  the  world.  The  whole  aim  of  education 
is,  after  all,  to  make  a  man  independent,  to  make 
the  intelligence  reach  out  in  keen  quest  of  its 
object,  and  at  its  own  and  not  at  another's  bid- 
ding. An  education  is  intended  to  make  a  man 
his  own  master,  and  so  far  as  any  man  is  not 
his  own  master,  in  just  so  far  is  he  uneducated. 
What  he  knows,  or  does  not  know,  of  books  does 
not  alter  the  fact. 

Much  of  the  pharisaism  and  priggishness  on 


332    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  subject  of  education  arises  from  the  fact  that 
the  world  is  divided  into  two  camps  as  regards 
knowledge:  those  who  believe  that  the  astrono- 
mer alone  knows  the  stars,  and  those  who  be- 
lieve that  he  knows  them  best  who  sleeps  in  the 
open  beneath  them.  In  reality,  neither  type  of 
mind  is  complete  without  the  other. 

To  turn  from  any  theoretical  discussion  of 
the  subject,  it  remains  to  be  said  that  Germany 
has  trained  her  whole  population  into  the  best 
working  team  in  the  world.  Without  the  natu- 
ral advantages  of  either  England  or  America  she 
has  become  the  rival  of  both.  Her  superior  men- 
tal training  has  enabled  her  to  wrest  wealth  from 
by-products,  and  she  saves  and  grows  rich  on 
what  America  wastes.  Whether  Germany  has 
succeeded  in  giving  the  ply  of  character  to  her 
youth,  as  she  folds  them  in  her  educational  fac- 
tories, I  sometimes  doubt.  That  she  has  not 
made  them  independent  and  ready  to  grapple 
with  new  situations,  and  strange  peoples,  and 
swift  emergencies,  their  own  past  and  present 
history  shows. 

It  is  a  very  strenuous  and  economical  exist- 
ence, however,  for  everybody,  and  it  requires  a 
politically  tame  population  to  be  thus  driven. 
The  dangerous  geographical  situation  of  Ger- 
many, ringed  round  by  enemies,  has  made  sub- 


LAND  OF  DAMNED  PROFESSORS    333 

mission  to  hard  work,  and  to  an  iron  autocratic 
government  necessary.  To  be  a  nation  at  all  it 
was  necessary  to  obey  and  to  submit,  to  sacri- 
fice and  to  save.  These  things  they  have  been 
taught  as  have  no  other  European  people. 
Greater  wealth,  increased  power,  a  larger  role 
in  the  world,  are  bringing  new  problems.  Edu- 
cation thus  far  has  been  in  the  direction  of  fitting 
each  one  into  his  place  in  a  great  machine,  and 
less  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  development 
of  that  elasticity  of  mind  which  makes  for  inde- 
pendence; but  men  educate  themselves  into  inde- 
pendence, and  that  time  is  coming  swiftly  for 
Germany. 

"Also  he  hath  set  the  world  in  their  heart," 
and  one  wonders  what  this  population,  hitherto 
so  amenable,  so  economical,  and  so  little  worldly, 
^ill  do  with  this  new  world.  The  temptations  of 
wealth,  the  sirens  of  luxury,  the  opportunities 
for  amusement  and  dissipation,  are  all  to  the 
fore  in  the  Germany  of  to-day  as  they  were  cer- 
tainly not  twenty-five  years  ago.  Ulysses,  alas, 
does  not  bind  himself  to  the  mast  very  tightly 
as  he  passes  these  enchanted  isles  of  modern 
luxury.  "The  land  of  damned  professors"  has 
learned  its  lessons  from  those  same  professors 
so  well,  that  it  is  now  ready  to  take  a  post- 
graduate course  in  world  politics;  and  as  I  said 


334     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"  ~& 

in  the  beginning,  some  of  our  friends  are  put- 
ting the  word  "damned"  in  other  parts  of  this, 
and  other  sentences,  when  they  describe  the 
rival  prowess  and  progress  of  the  Germans. 


VII 
THE  DISTAFF  SIDE 

MADAME  NECKER  writes  of  women: 
"Les  femmes  tiennent  la  place  de  ces 
legers  duvets  qu'on  introduit  dans  les 
caisses  de  porcelaine;  on  n'y  fait  point  d' atten- 
tion, mais  si  on  les  retire,  tout  se  brise." 

When  one  sees  women  and  dogs  harnessed  to- 
gether dragging  carts  about  the  streets;  when 
one  sees  women  doing  the  lighter  work  of  sweep- 
ing up  leaves  and  collecting  rubbish  in  the  for- 
ests and  on  the  larger  estates ;  doing  the  garden- 
ing work  in  Saxony  and  other  places;  when  one 
sees  them  by  the  hundreds  working  bare-legged  in 
the  beet-fields  in  Silesia  and  elsewhere  through- 
out Germany;  when  one  reads  "Viele  Weiber 
sind  gut  weil  sie  nicht  wissen  wie  man  es  machen 
muss  um  bose  zu  sein,"  and  "Der  Mann  nach 
Freiheit  strebt,  das  Weib  nach  Sitte,"  two 
phrases  from  the  German  classics,  Lessing  and 
Goethe ;  when  one  recalls  the  shameless  careless- 
ness of  Goethe's  treatment  of  all  women;  of  how 
his  love-poems  were  sometimes  sent  by  the  same 
mail  to  the  lady  and  to  the  press;  and  the  un- 
restrained worship  of  Goethe  by  the  German 

335 


women  of  his  day;  when  one  sees  time  and  time 
again  all  over  Germany  the  women  shouldered 
into  the  street  while  the  men  keep  to  the  side- 
walk; when  one  sees  in  the  streets,  railway  car- 
riages, and  other  public  conveyances,  the  insult- 
ing staring  to  which  every  woman  is  subjected 
if  she  have  a  trace  of  good  looks,  one  realizes 
that  at  any  rate  Madame  Necker  was  not  writing 
of  German  women.  Let  me  add  that  so  far  as 
the  great  Goethe  is  concerned,  it  is  by  no  Pu- 
ritan yard-stick  that  I  am  measuring  him,  but 
by  the  German's  own  high  standard  which  de- 
spises any  mating  of  true  sentiment  with  com- 
mercialism. "  Beatus  ille  qui  procul  negotiis," 
certainly  applies  to  one's  affairs  of  the  heart. 

In  the  gallery  at  Dresden,  where  the  loveliest 
mother's  face  in  all  the  world  shines  down  upon 
you  from  Raphael's  canvas  like  a  benediction, 
there  is  a  small  picture  by  Rubens,  "The  Judg- 
ment of  Paris."  The  three  goddesses — induitur 
formosa  est;  exuitur  ipsa  forma  est — have  taken 
literally  the  compliment  paid  to  a  certain  beau- 
tiful customer  by  a  renowned  French  dress- 
maker: "Un  rien  et  madame  est  habillee!" 
They  are  coquettishly  revealing  their  claims  to 
the  Eve-bitten  fruit  which  Paris  holds  in  his 
hand.  Paris  and  his  friend  are  in  the  most  non- 
chalant of  attitudes.  They  could  not  be  more 
indifferent,  or  more  superior  in  appearance,  were 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  337 

they  dandies  judging  the  class  for  costermonger's 
donkeys  at  a  provincial  horse-show.  The  three 
most  beautiful  women  in  the  world  are  squirm- 
ing and  posturing  for  praise,  and  a  decision,  be- 
fore two  as  sophisticated  and  self-satisfied  men 
as  one  will  ever  see  on  canvas  or  off  it. 

The  same  subject  is  treated  by  a  man  of  the 
same  breed,  but  of  a  later  day,  named  Feuer- 
bach,  and  his  picture  hangs,  I  think,  in  Breslau. 
Here  again  the  supersuperiority  of  the  male  is 
portrayed. 

In  the  Church  of  Saint  Sebaldus  at  Nurem- 
berg, there  is  a  delightful  mural  painting  which 
makes  one  merry  even  to  recall  it.  The  subject 
is  the  Garden  of  Eden.  Adam  and  Eve  are 
being  lectured  by  an  elderly  man  in  flowing 
robes  with  a  long  white  beard.  His  beard  alone 
would  more  than  supply  Adam  and  Eve  with 
the  covering  they  lack.  In  an  easy  attitude, 
with  neither  haste  nor  anxiety,  he  is  pointing  out 
to  them  the  error  of  their  ways.  He  is  as  de- 
tached in  manner  as  though  he  were  Professor 
Wundt,  lecturing  to  us  at  Leipsic  on  the  fourth 
dimension  of  space.  Adam  is  somewhat  de- 
jected and  reclines  upon  the  ground.  Eve,  un- 
abashed, with  nothing  on  but  the  apple  which 
she  is  munching,  is  evidently  in  a  reckless  mood. 
She  looks  like  a  child  of  fifteen,  with  her  hair 
down  her  back;  the  defiance  of  her  attitude  is 


338     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

that  of  a  naughty  little  girl.  The  world-old 
problem  is  under  discussion,  but  with  an  air  of 
good  humor  and  cheerfulness  on  the  part  of  the 
lecturer,  as  though  there  were  still  time  in  the 
world,  as  though  hurry  were  an  undiscovered 
human  attribute,  as  though  possibly  the  world 
would  still  go  on  even  if  the  problem  were  left 
unsolved,  and  this  first  leafy  parliament  ad- 
journed sine  die. 

They  were  so  much  wiser  than  are  we !  They 
knew  then  that  there  would  be  other  sessions  of 
congress,  and  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  decide 
everything  on  that  spring  day  of  the  year  One. 
But  here  again  in  this  picture  it  is  the  male  atti- 
tude toward  the  woman  that  is  of  chief  interest. 
Adam  is  plainly  bored.  What  if  the  woman  has 
broken  into  the  sanctuary  of  knowledge,  she  will 
only  be  the  bigger  fool,  he  seems  to  say.  As  for 
the  professor  in  the  red  robes,  his  easy,  patron- 
izing manner  is  indicative  enough  of  his  mental 
top-loftiness  toward  the  woman  question.  You 
can  almost  hear  him  say  as  he  strokes  his  beard : 
"Kiiche,  Kinder,  Kirche!" 

From  the  fields  of  Silesia,  where  the  beet  in- 
dustry is  possible  only  because  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  bare-legged  girls  and  women  to  single 
the  beets,  a  process  not  possible  by  machinery, 
at  a  wage  of  from  twenty -five  to  thirty  cents  a 
day,  to  these  German  paintings  with  their  illus- 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  339 

trations  of  the  spiritual  and  moral  attitude  of 
the  German  man  toward  the  German  woman, 
one  sees  everywhere  and  among  practically  all 
classes  an  attitude  of  condescension  toward 
women  among  the  polite  and  polished;  an  atti- 
tude of  carelessness  bordering  on  contempt 
among  the  rude.  Their  attitude  is  like  that  of 
the  Jews  who  cry  in  their  synagogues,  "Thank 
God  for  not  having  made  me  a  woman!" 

One  can  judge,  not  incorrectly,  of  the  status 
of  women  in  a  country  by  the  manners  and  habits 
of  the  men,  entirely  dissociated  from  their  rela- 
tions to  women.  When  one  sees  men  equipped 
with  small  mirrors  and  small  brushes  and  combs, 
which  they  use  in  all  sorts  of  public  places,  even 
in  the  streets,  in  the  street-cars,  in  omnibuses, 
and  in  the  theatres;  when  one  opens  the  door 
to  a  knock  to  find  a  gentleman,  a  small  mirror 
in  one  hand  and  a  tiny  brush  in  the  other,  pre- 
paring himself  for  his  entrance  into  your  hotel 
sitting-room;  you  are  bound  to  think  that  these 
persons  are  in  the  childhood  days  of  personal 
hygiene,  as  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they  are, 
but  also  that  their  women  folk  must  be  still  in 
the  Eryops  age  of  social  sophistication,  not  to 
put  a  stop  to  such  bucolic  methods  of  grooming. 
Even  though  the  Eryops  is  a  gigantic  tadpole,  a 
hundred  times  older  than  the  oldest  remains  of 
man,  this  is  hardly  an  exaggeration. 


340     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

In  no  other  country  in  the  cultured  group  of 
nations  is  the  animal  man  so  naively  vain,  so  de- 
liciously  self-conscious,  so  untrained  in  the  ways 
of  the  polite  world,  so  serenely  oblivious,  not 
merely  of  the  rights  of  women  but  of  the  simple 
courtesy  of  the  strong  to  the  weak.  It  is  the  only 
country  I  have  visited  where  the  hands  of  the  men 
are  better  cared  for  than  the  hands  of  the  women ; 
and  this  is  not  a  pleasant  commentary  upon  the 
question  of  who  does  the  rough  work,  and  who 
has  the  vanity  and  who  th«  leisure  for  a  meticu- 
lous toilet.  One  must  not  forget  that  regular  and 
systematic  cleansing  of  the  person  is  a  very 
modern  fashion.  As  late  as  the  early  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  tooth-brushes  were  not 
allowed  in  certain  French  convents,  being  looked 
upon  as  a  luxury.  Cleanliness  was  not  very  com- 
mon a  century  and  a  half  ago  in  any  country. 
In  1770  the  publication  of  Monsieur  Perrel's 
"  Pogonotomie,  ou  1'Art  d'apprendre  a  se  raser 
soi-me'me,"  created  a  sensation  among  fashion- 
able people,  and  enthusiasts  studied  self -shaving. 
The  author  of  "Lois  de  la  Galanterie"  in  1640 
writes:  "Every  day  one  should  take  pains  to 
wash  one's  hands,  and  one  should  also  wash  one's 
face  almost  as  often!" 

The  copious  streams  of  hot  and  cold  water, 
turned  into  a  porcelain  tub  at  any  time  of  the 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  341 

day  or  night;  the  brushes,  and  soaps,  and  towels, 
and  toilet  waters,  and  powders  of  our  day  were 
quite  unknown  to  our  not  far-off  ancestors. 
The  oft-repeated  and  minute  ablutions  of  our 
day  are  almost  as  modern  as  bicycles,  and  not 
as  ancient  as  the  railways.  The  Germans  are 
only  a  little  behind  the  rest  of  us  in  this  soap  and 
water  cult,  that  is  all. 

In  the  streets  and  public  conveyances  of  the 
cities,  in  the  beer-gardens  and  restaurants  in  the 
country,  in  the  summer  and  winter  resorts  from 
the  Baltic  to  the  Black  Forest,  from  the  Rhine 
to  Bohemia,  it  is  ever  the  same.  They  seat 
themselves  at  table  first,  and  have  their  napkins 
hanging  below  their  Adam's  apples  before  their 
women  are  in  their  chairs;  hundreds  of  times 
have  I  seen  their  women  arrive  at  table  after 
they  were  seated,  not  a  dozen  times  have  I  seen 
their  masters  rise  to  receive  them;  their  prefer- 
ence for  the  inside  of  the  sidewalk  is  practically 
universal;  even  officers  in  uniform,  but  this  is 
of  rare  occurrence,  will  take  their  places  in  a 
railway  carriage,  all  of  them  smoking,  where 
two  ladies  are  sitting,  and  wait  till  requested 
before  throwing  their  cigars  away,  and  what  ci- 
gars! and  then  by  smiles  and  innuendoes  make 
the  ladies  so  uncomfortable  that  they  are  driven 
from  the  carriage.  Even  eleven  hundred  years 


342    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ago  the  German  woman  had  rather  a  rough  time 
of  it.  Charlemagne  had  nine  wives,  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  unduly  uxorious  or  unweary- 
ing in  his  infatuations.  He  made  the  wife  travel 
with  him,  and  all  nine  of  them  died,  worn  out 
by  travel  and  hardship.  There  is  a  constancy 
of  companionship  which  is  deadly. 

The  inconveniences  and  discomfort  of  going 
about  alone,  for  ladies  in  Germany,  I  have  heard 
not  from  a  dozen,  but  in  a  chorus  from  German 
ladies  themselves.  I  am  reciting  no  grievances 
of  my  compatriots,  for  I  have  seen  next  to  noth- 
ing of  Americans  for  a  year  or  more,  and  I  have 
no  personal  complaints,  for  these  soft  advent- 
urers scent  danger  quickly,  and  give  the  masters 
of  the  world,  whether  male  or  female,  a  wide 
berth. 

These  gross  manners  are  the  result  of  two  fac- 
tors in  German  life  that  it  is  well  to  keep  in 
mind.  They  are  a  poor  people,  only  just  emerg- 
ing from  poverty,  slavery,  and  disaster;  poor 
not  only  in  possessions,  but  poor  in  the  experi- 
ence of  how  to  use  them.  They  do  not  know 
how  to  use  their  new  freedom.  They  are  as 
awkward  in  this  new  world  of  theirs,  of  greater 
wealth  and  opportunity,  as  unyoked  oxen  that 
have  strayed  into  city  streets.  The  abject 
deference  of  the  women,  who  know  nothing 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  343 

better  than  these  parochial  masters,  adds  to 
their  sense  of  their  own  importance.  It  is 
largely  the  women  themselves  who  make  their 
men  insupportable. 

The  other  factor  is  the  rigid  caste  system  of 
their  social  habits.  There  is  no  association  be- 
tween the  officers,  the  nobility,  the  officials,  the 
cultured  classes,  and  the  middle  and  lower  classes. 
The  public  schools  and  universities  are  learning 
shops;  they  do  not  train  youths  in  character, 
manners,  or  in  the  ways  of  the  world.  They  do 
not  play  together,  or  work  together,  or  amuse 
themselves  together.  The  creeds  and  codes, 
habits  and  manners  of  the  better  classes  are, 
therefore,  not  allowed  to  percolate  and  permeate 
those  less  experienced.  There  is  no  word  for  gen- 
tleman in  German.  The  words  gebildeter  and  an- 
stdndiger  are  used,  and  it  is  significant  to  notice 
that  the  stress  is  thus  laid  on  mental  develop- 
ment or  upon  obedience  to  formal  rules.  A  man 
may  be  a  very  great  gentleman  and  a  true  gentle- 
man and  not  be  a  scholar.  The  late  Duke  of 
Devonshire  cared  more  for  horses  than  for  books 
and  pictures,  and  Abraham  Lincoln  was  one  of 
the  greatest  gentlemen  of  all  time. 

In  Homburg  one  day  I  saw  a  tall,  fine-looking, 
elderly  man  step  aside  and  off  the  sidewalk  to 
let  two  ladies  pass.  It  was  for  Germany  a  no- 
ticeable act.  He  turned  out  to  be  a  famous 


344     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

general  then  in  waiting  upon  the  Emperor. 
There  are  not  a  few  such  courtly  gentlemen  in 
Germany,  not  a  few  whose  knightliness  compares 
with  that  of  any  gentleman  in  the  world.  Alas 
for  the  great  bulk  of  the  Germans,  they  never 
come  into  contact  with  them,  their  example  is 
lost,  their  leaven  of  high  breeding  and  courtesy 
does  not  lighten  the  bourgeois  loaf !  In  America 
and  in  England  we  are  all  threading  our  way  in 
and  out  among  all  classes.  We  are  much  more 
democratic.  Men  of  every  class  are  in  contact 
with  men  of  every  other,  we  play  together  and 
work  together,  and  consequently  the  level  of 
manners  and  habits  is  higher.  This  state  of 
things  is  less  marked  in  south  Germany  than 
in  Prussia,  but  is  more  or  less  true  everywhere. 
But  how  can  this  be  possible,  I  hear  it  replied, 
in  that  land  where  every  officer  clacks  his  heels 
together  with  a  report  like  an  exploding  torpedo, 
ducks  his  head  from  his  rigid  vertebrae,  and  then 
bends  to  kiss  the  lady's  hand;  and  where  every 
civilian  of  any  standing  does  the  same?  I  am 
not  writing  of  the  nobility  and  of  the  corps  of 
officers  in  this  connection.  No  doubt  there  are 
black  sheep  among  them,  though  I  have  not 
met  them.  Of  the  many  scores  of  them  whom 
I  have  met,  whom  I  have  ridden  with,  dined 
with,  romped  with,  drunk  with,  travelled  with,  I 
have  only  to  say  that  they  are  as  courteous,  as 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  345 

unwilling  to  offend  or  to  take  advantage,  as  are 
brave  men  in  other  countries  I  know.  I  am 
writing  of  the  average  man  and  woman,  of  those 
who  make  up  the  bulk  of  every  population,  of 
those  upon  whom  it  depends  whether  a  national 
life  is  healthy  or  otherwise. 

The  very  stiffness  of  these  mannerisms,  the 
clacking  of  heels,  the  ducking  of  heads,  the  kiss- 
ing of  hands,  the  countless  grave  formalities 
among  the  men  themselves,  are  all  indicative  of 
social  weakness.  They  are  afraid  to  walk  with- 
out the  crutches  of  certain  formulae,  of  certain 
hard-and-fast  rules,  of  certain  laws  that  they 
worship  and  fall  down  before.  Slavery  is  still 
upon  them.  Escaped  from  a  bodily  master  they 
fly  to  the  refuge  of  a  moral  and  spiritual  one. 
These  formalities  are  prescribed  forms  which 
they  wear  as  they  wear  uniforms;  they  are  not 
the  result  of  innate  consideration. 

Uniform-wearing  is  a  passion  among  the  Ger- 
mansTand  may  be  included  as  still  another  indi- 
cation of  the  universal  desire  to  take  refuge 
behind  forms,  and  laws,  and  fixed  customs,  the 
universal  desire  to  shrink  from  depending  upon 
their  own  judgment  and  initiative.  They  will 
not  even  bow  or  kiss  a  lady's  hand,  without  a 
prescription  from  a  social  physician  whom  they 
trust. 

The  German  officials  are  always  officials,  al- 


346     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ways  addressed  and  addressing  others  punctil- 
iously by  their  titles.  They  do  not  throw  off 
officialdom  outside  their  duties  and  their  offices 
as  we  do,  but  they  glory  in  it.  We  throw  off  our 
uniforms  as  soon  as  may  be;  we  feel  hampered 
by  them.  This  leads  to  a  feeling  on  the  part  of 
the  Germans  that  we  are  too  free  and  easy,  and 
not  respectful  enough  toward  our  own  dignity 
or  toward  theirs.  We  feel,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  it  is  a  farce  to  go  to  the  every-day  markets 
of  life,  whether  for  daily  food  or  for  daily  social 
intercourse,  with  the  bullion  and  certified  checks 
of  our  official  dignity;  we  go  rather  with  the 
small  change  that  jingles  in  all  pockets  alike, 
and  is  ready  to  be  handed  out  for  the  frequent 
and  unimportant  buying  and  selling  of  the  day 
and  hour.  We  look  upon  this  grallatory  attitude 
toward  life  as  artificial  and  hampering,  and  pre- 
fer to  walk  among  our  neighbors  as  much  as 
possible  upon  our  own  feet. 

I  am  not  pretending  to  fix  standards  of  eti- 
quette. I  can  quite  understand  that  when  we 
grab  the  hand  of -the  German's  wife  and  shake 
it  like  a  pump-handle  instead  of  bowing  over  it; 
that  when  we  nod  cheerfully  to  him  in  the  street 
with  a  wave  of  the  hand  or  a  lifting  of  a  cane  or 
umbrella  instead  of  taking  off  our  hat;  that 
when  we  fail  to  address  both  him  and  his  lady 
with  the  title  belonging  to  them,  no  matter  how 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  347 

commonplace  that  title,  we  shock  his  prejudices 
and  his  code  of  good  manners. 

If  there  is  a  stranger,  a  lady,  in  the  drawing- 
room  before  dinner  the  German  men  line  up  in 
single  file  and  ask  to  be  presented  to  her.  If  the 
lady  is  tall  and  handsome  and  the  party  a  large 
one,  it  looks  almost  like  an  ovation.  If  you  go 
to  dine  at  an  officers'  mess  the  men  think  it  their 
duty  to  come  up  and  ask  to  be  presented  to  you. 
They  wear  their  mourning  bands  on  the  forearm 
instead  of  the  upperarm;  they  wear  their  wed- 
ding-rings on  the  fourth  finger  of  the  right  hand ; 
many  of  them  wear  rather  more  conspicuous 
jewelry  than  we  consider  to  be  in  good  taste. 

The^sfifa,  too,  plays  a  role  in  German  house- 
holds and  offices torwHTciri  have  sought  in  vain 
for  an  explanation.  Not  even  German  archae- 
ology supplies  a  historical  ancestry  for  this  sofa 
cult.  It  is  the  place  of  honor.  If  you  go  to  tea 
you  are  enthroned  on  the  sofa.  Even  if  you  go 
to  an  office,  say  of  the  police,  or  of  the  manager 
of  the  city  slaughter-house,  or  of  the  hospital 
superintendent,  you  are  manoeuvred  about  till 
they  get  you  on  the  sofa,  generally  behind  a  table. 
I  soon  discovered  that  this  was  the  seat  of  honor. 
Sofas  have  their  place  in  life,  I  admit.  There 
are  sofas  that  we  all  remember  with  tears,  with 
tenderness,  with  reverence.  They  have  been 
the  boards  upon  which  we  first  appeared  in  the 


348     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

role  of  lover  perhaps;  or  where  we  have  fondled 
and  comforted  a  discouraged  child;  or  where  we 
have  pumped  new  ambitions  and  larger  life  into 
a  weaker  brother;  or  where  we  have  tossed  in 
the  agony  of  grief  or  disappointment;  or  where 
we  have  waited  drearily  and  alone  the  result  of 
a  consultation  of  moral  or  physical  life  and  death 
in  the  next  room.  Indeed,  this  all  reminds  me 
that  I  could  write  an  essay  on  sofas  that  would  be 
poignant,  touching,  autobiographical,  luminous, 
as  could  most  other  men,  but  this  would  not  ex- 
plain the  position  of  the  sofa  in  Germany  in  the 
least.  "Travels  on  a  Sofa" — I  must  do  it  one 
day,  and  perhaps,  with  more  serious  study  of  the 
subject,  light  may  be  thrown  upon  this  question 
of  the  sofa  in  Germany. 

Even  at  large  and  rather  formal  dinner-parties 
the  host  bows  and  drinks  to  his  guests,  first  one 
and  then  another.  At  the  end  of  the  meal,  in 
many  households,  it  is  the  custom  to  bow  and 
kiss  your  hostess's  hand  and  say  "Mahlzeit"  a 
shortened  form  of  "May  the  meal  be  blessed  to 
you."  You  also  shake  hands  with  the  other 
guests  and  say  "Mahlzeit."  In  some  smarter 
houses  this  is  looked  upon  as  old-fashioned  and  is 
not  done.  I  look  upon  it  as  a  charming  custom, 
and  think  it  a  pity  that  it  should  be  done  away 
with. 

Young  unmarried  girls  and  women  courtesy  to 


THE  DISTAFF  SIDE  349 

the  elder  women  and  kiss  their  hands,  also  a 
custom  I  approve.  On  the  other  hand,  where  a 
stalwart  officer  appears  in  a  small  drawing-room 
and  seats  himself  at  the  slender  tea-table  for  a 
cup  of  afternoon  tea,  holding  his  sword  by  his  side 
or  between  his  legs,  that  seems  to  me  an  unneces- 
sary precaution,  even  when  Americans  are  pres- 
ent, for  many  of  us  nowadays  go  about  unarmed. 

Except  on  official  or  formal  occasions  it  seems 
a  matter  of  questionable  good  taste  to  appear, 
say  in  a  hotel  restaurant,  with  one's  breast  hung 
with  medals  or  with  orders  on  one's  coat  or  in 
the  button-hole.  Let  'em  find  out  what  a  big 
boy  am  I  without  help  from  self-imposed  placards 
seems  to  me  to  be  perhaps  the  more  modest  way. 
The  method  in  vogue  in  Japanese  temples,  where 
the  worshippers  jangle  a  bell  to  call  the  attention 
of  the  gods  to  their  prayers  or  offerings,  seems 
out  of  place  where  the  god  is  merely  the  casual 
man  in  the  street,  in  a  Berlin  restaurant. 

At  more  than  one  dinner  the  soup  is  followed 
by  a  meat  course,  after  which  comes  the  fish. 
This  does  not  mean  that  the  dinners  are  not 
good.  I  fondly  recall  a  dish  of  sauerkraut  boiled 
in  white  wine  and  served  in  a  pineapple.  I  may 
not  give  names,  but  the  dinners  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Fourth  of  December,  of  Mrs.  Twenty -first  of 
January,  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Thirtieth  of  January, 
and  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  February  First,  and  others 


350     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

rank  very  high  in  my  gastronomic  calendar.  Do 
not  imagine  from  what  I  have  written  that  Lucul- 
lus  has  left  no  disciples  in  Germany.  I  could 
easily  add  a  page  to  the  list  I  have  mentioned, 
and  because  we  look  upon  some  of  these  customs 
of  the  German  as  absurd  is  no  reason  for  for- 
getting that  he  often,  and  from  his  stand-point 
rightly,  looks  upon  us  as  boors.  I  like  the  Ger- 
mans and  I  pretend  to  have  learned  very  much 
from  them.  To  sneer  at  superficial  differences 
is  to  lose  all  profit  from  intercourse  with  other 
peoples.  Goethe  is  right,  "Ueberall  lernt  man 
nur  von  dem,  den  man  liebt!"  The  argument 
is  only  all  on  our  side  when  we  are  impervious  to 
impressions  and  to  other  standards  of  manners 
and  morals  than  our  own. 

"Am  Ende  hangen  wir  doch  ab 
Von  Kreaturen  die  wir  machten" 

are  two  lines  at  least  from  the  second  part  of 
"Faust"  that  we  can  all  understand. 

It  is  sometimes  thrown  at  us  Americans  that 
we  love  a  title,  and  that  we  are  not  averse  to  the 
ornamentation  of  our  names  with  pseudo  and 
attenuated  "Honorables"  and  "Colonels"  and 
"Judge"  and  so  on;  and  I  am  bound  to  admit 
the  impeachment,  for  I  blush  at  some  of  my  be- 
colonelled  and  becaptained  friends,  and  wonder 
at  their  rejoicing  over  such  effeminate  honorifics, 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  351 

especially  those  colonelcies  born  of  clattering  be- 
hind a  civilian  governor,  on  a  badly  ridden  horse, 
a  title  which  may  be  compared  with  that  most 
attenuated  title  of  all,  that  of  a  Texan,  who 
when  asked  why  he  was  called  "colonel"  replied, 
that  he  had  married  the  widow  of  a  colonel! 

I  prefer  "Esqr."  to  "Mr."  merely  because  it 
makes  it  easier  to  assort  the  daily  mail;  "Mr.," 
"Mrs.,"  and  "Miss"  are  so  easily  taken  for  one 
another  on  an  envelope,  and  particularly  at 
Christmas  time  this  more  distinctly  legible  title 
avoids  the  deplorable  misdirection  of  the  secrets 
of  Santa  Glaus;  aside  from  that  I  am  happy  to 
be  addressed  merely  by  my  name,  like  any  other 
sovereign. 

We  are,  too,  somewhat  overexcited  when  for- 
eign royalties  appear  among  us.     "What  wud 
ye  do  if  ye  were  a  king  an'  come  to  this  coun- 
thry?"  asked  Mr.  Hennessy. 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Dooley,  "there's  wan  thing 
I  wuddent  do.  I  wuddent  r-read  th'  Declaration 
iv  Independence.  I'd  be  afraid  I'd  die  laughin'." 

In^G_ermany  not  only  are  titles  showered  upon 
the  populace,  but  it  is  distinctly  and  officially 
stated  by  what  title  the  office-holder  shall  be 
addressed. 

In  a  case  I  know,  a  certain  lady  failed  to  sign 
herself  to  one  of  the  small  officials  working  upon 


352     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

her  estate  as,  let  us  say,  "I  remain  very  sincerely 
yours,"  or  its  German  equivalent;  whereupon 
the  person  addressed  wrote  and  demanded  that 
communications  addressed  to  him  should  be 
signed  in  the  regulation  manner.  A  lawyer  was 
consulted,  and  it  was  found  that  a  similar  case 
had  been  taken  to  the  courts  and  decided  in 
favor  of  the  recipient  of  wounded  vanity. 

In  hearty  and  manly  opposition  to  this  atti- 
tude toward  life  is  the  example  of  Admiral  X. 
He  had  served  long  and  gallantly,  and  just  before 
he  retired  a  friend  said  to  him:  "I  hear  that 
they're  going  to  knight  you."  "By  God,  sir, 
not  without  a  court-martial!"  was  the  prompt 
reply.  Indeed,  things  have  come  to  such  a  pass 
in  England  that  the  offer  of  a  knighthood  to  a 
gentleman  of  lineage,  breeding,  and  real  dis- 
tinction, has  been  for  years  looked  upon  as  either 
a  joke  or  an  insult. 

Not  so  among  my  German  friends ;  they  have 
a  ravenous  appetite  for  these  flimsy  tickets  of 
passing  commendation.  At  many,  many  hospi- 
table boards  in  Berlin  I  have  been  present  where 
no  left  breast  was  barren  of  a  medal,  and  where 
the  only  medal  won  by  participation  in  actual 
warfare,  belonging  to  one  of  the  guests,  was 
safely  packed  away  in  his  house.  And  as  for  the 
titles,  there  is  no  room  in  a  small  volume  like 


THE  DISTAFF  SIDE  353 

this  to  enumerate  them  all;  and  the  women  folk 
all  carry  the  titles  of  the  husband,  from  Frau 
Ober-Postassistent,  Frau  Regierungs  Assessor, 
up  to  the  Chancellor's  lady,  who,  by  the  way, 
wears  a  title  in  her  mere  face  and  bearing.  Not 
long  ago  I  saw  in  a  provincial  sheet  the  notice  of 
the  death  of  a  wroman  of  eighty,  who  wras  gravely 
dignified  by  her  bereaved  relatives  with  the  title, 
and  as  the  relict  of,  a  veterinary. 

Upon  a  certain  funicular  at  a  mountain  resort, 
where  the  cars  pass  one  another  up  and  down 
every  twenty  minutes,  the  conductors  salute  one 
another  stiffly  each  time  they  pass. 

Of  the  army  of  people  with  titles  of  Ober- 
Regierungsrat,  Geheimer  Regierungsrat,  Wirk- 
licher  Geheimer  Regierungsrat,  Wirklicher  Ge- 
heimer Ober-Regierungsrat,  Wirklicher  Geheim- 
erat,  who  also  carries  the  additional  title  of 
"Excellenz"  with  his  title;  Referendar,  Assessor, 
Justizrat,  Geheimer  Justizrat,  Gerichts- Assessor, 
Amtsrichter,  Amtsgerichtrat,  Oberamtsrichter, 
Landgerichtsdirector,  Amtsgerichtsprasident,  Ge- 
heimer Finanzrat,  Wirklicher  Geheimer  Ober 
Finanzrat,  Legationsrat,  Wirklicher  Geheimer 
Legationsrat,  Vice  Konsul,  Konsul,  General 
Konsul,  Commercienrat,  Wirklichercommer- 
cienrat,  Staatsanwalt,  Staatsanwaltschaftsrat, 
Herr  Erster  Staatsanwalt,  where  the  "Herr"  is 


354     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

a  legal  part  of  the  title;  of  those  who  must  be 
addressed  as  "  Excellenz,"  and  in  addition  mili- 
tary and  naval  titles,  and  the  horde  of  handles  to 
names  of  those  in  the  railway,  postal,  telegraph, 
street-cleaning,  forestry,  and  other  departments, 
one  must  merely  throw  up  one's  hands  in  despair, 
and  bow  to  the  inevitable  disgrace  of  being  quite 
unable  to  name  this  Noah's-ark  procession  of 
petty  dignitaries. 

In  the  department  of  post  and  telegraph  a 
new  order  has  gone  forth,  issued  during  the  last 
few  months,  by  which,  after  passing  certain  ex- 
aminations, the  employees  may  take  the  title  of 
Ober-Postschaffner  and  Ober-Leitungsaufseher. 
After  thirty  years'  service  the  postman  is  digni- 
fied with  the  title  of  Ober-Brieftrager.  It  is 
difficult  to  understand  the^type  ofjnind  which 
is  flattered  by  such  infantile  honors.  At  any 
rate,  it  is  a  cheap  system  of  rewards,  and  so  long 
as  men  will  work  for  such  trumpery  ends  the 
state  profits  by  playing  upon  their  childish 
vanity.  During  the  year  1912  more  than  7,000 
decorations  were  distributed,  and  some  1,500  of 
these  were  of  the  three  classes  of  the  Order  of 
the  Red  Eagle.  On  the  twenty-fifth  anniver- 
sary of  the  reign  of  the  present  Emperor,  in 
1913,  still  another  medal  is  to  be  struck,  to  be 
given  to  worthy  officials  and  officers. 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  355 

All  the  professions  and  all  the  trades,  too,  have 
their  pharmacopoeia  of  tags  and  titles,  and  you 
will  go  far  afield  to  find  a  German  woman  who 
is  not  Frau  Something-or-other  Schmidt,  or 
Fischer,  or  Miiller.  Every  day  one  hears  women 
greeting  one  another  as  Frau  Oberforstmeister, 
Frau  Superintendent,  Frau  Medicinalrat,  Frau 
Oberbergrat,  Frau  Apothek,  Frau  Stadt-Mu- 
sikdirektor,  Frau  Doktor  Rechtsanwalt,  Frau 
Geschaftsfiihrer,  and  the  like.  All  these  titles, 
too,  appear  in  the  hotel  registers  and  in  all 
announcements  in  the  newspapers.  Even  when 
a  man  dies,  his  title  follows  him  to  the  grave, 
and  even  beyond  it,  in  the  speech  of  those 
left  behind. 

These  uniforms  and  titles  and  small  formali- 
ties do  make,  I  aHmitr,~for  orderliness  and  rigid- 
ity, and  perhaps  for  contentment;  since  every 
man  and  woman  feels  that  though  they  are  below 
some  one  else  on  the  ladder  they  are  above  oth- 
ers; and  every  day  and  in  every  company  their 
vanity  is  lightly  tickled  by  hearing  their  impor- 
tance, small  though  it  be,  proclaimed  by  the 
mention  of  their  titles. 

It  pleases  the  foreigners  to  laugh  and  some- 
times to  jeer  at  the  universal  sign  of  "  Verboten" 
(Forbidden)  seen  all  over  Germany.  They  look 
upon  it  as  the  seal  of  an  autocratic  and  bureau- 


350     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

cratic  government.  It  is  nothing  of  the  kind. 
The  army,  the  bureaucracy,  the  autocratic 
Kaiser  at  the  helm,  and  the  landscape  bestrewn 
with  "Verboten"  and  " Nicht  gestattet"  (Not  al- 
lowed), these  are  necessities  in  the  case  of  these 
people.  They  do  not  know  instinctively,  or  by 
training  or  experience,  where  to  expectorate  and 
where  not  to;  where  to  smoke  and  where  not  to; 
what  to  put  their  feet  on  and  what  not  to;  where 
to  walk  and  where  not  to;  when  to  stare  and 
when  not  to;  when  to  be  dignified  and  when  to 
laugh;  and,  least  of  all,  how  to  take  a  joke;  how, 
when,  or  how  much  to  eat,  drink,  or  bathe,  or 
how  to  dress  properly  or  appropriately.  The 
Emperor  is  almost  the  only  man  in  Germany 
who  knows  what  chaff  is  and  when  to  use  it. 

The  more  you  know  them,  the  longer  you  live 
among  them,  the  less  you  laugh  at  "Verboten" 
The  trouble  is  not  that  there  are  too  many  of 
these  warnings,  but  that  there  are  not  enough! 
When  you  see  in  flaring  letters  in  the  street-cars, 
"  In  alighting  the  left  hand  on  the  left-hand  rail," 
when  you  read  on  the  bill  of  fare  in  the  dining- 
car  brief  instructions  underlined,  as  to  how  to 
pour  out  your  wine  so  that  you  will  not  spill  it 
on  the  table-cloth ;  when  you  see  the  list  of  from 
ten  to  fifteen  rules  for  passengers  in  railway  car- 
riages; when  you  see  everywhere  where  crowds 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  357 

go  and  come,  "Keep  to  the  right";  when  you 
see  hanging  on  the  railings  of  the  canals  that 
flow  through  Berlin  a  life-buoy,  and  hanging  over 
it  full  instructions  with  diagrams  for  the  rescue 
of  the  drowning;  when  you  see  over  a  post-box, 
"Aufschrift  und  Marke  nicht  vergessen"  (Do 
not  forget  to  stamp  and  address  your  envelope) ; 
when  you  see  in  the  church  entrances  a  tray 
with  water  and  sal  volatile,  and  the  countless 
other  directions  and  remedies  and  preventives 
on  every  hand,  you  shrug  your  Saxon  shoulders 
and  smile  pityingly,  if  you  do  not  stand  and  stare 
and  then  laugh  outright,  as  I  was  fool  enough 
to  do  at  first.  But  you  soon  recover  from  this 
superficial  view  of  matters  Teutonic.  In  one 
cab  I  rode  in  I  was  cautioned  not  to  expectorate, 
not  to  put  my  feet  on  the  cushions,  not  to  tap 
on  the  glass  with  stick  or  umbrella,  not  to  open 
the  windows,  but  to  ask  the  driver  to  do  it,  and 
not  to  open  the  door  till  the  auto-taxi  stopped; 
one  hardly  has  time  to  learn  the  rules  before  the 
journey  is  over. 

In  April,  1913,  more  laws  are  to  come  into 
effect  for  the  street  traffic.  People  may  not 
walk  more  than  three  abreast;  they  may  not 
swing  their  canes  and  umbrellas  as  they  walk; 
they  may  not  drag  their  garments  in  the  street; 
they  may  not  sing,  whistle,  or  talk  loudly  in  the 


358     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

street,  nor  congregate  for  conversation;  there 
will  follow,  of  course,  a  regulation  as  to  the 
length  of  women's  dresses  to  be  worn  in  the 
street,  and  no  doubt  the  police  commissioner,  an 
amiable  bachelor,  will  decree  that  the  shorter 
the  better.  All  these  fussy  regulations  are  ridic- 
ulous to  us,  but  in  reality  they  are  horrible  and 
give  one  a  feeling  of  suffocation  when  living  in 
Germany.  In  the  days  when  everybody  rode  a 
bicycle,  each  rider  was  obliged  to  pass  an  exami- 
nation in  proficiency,  pay  a  small  tax,  and  was 
given  a  number  and  a  license.  Women  who  per- 
sisted in  wearing  dangerous  hat-pins  have  been 
ejected  from  public  vehicles. 

After  April  1,  1913,  no  shop  in  Berlin  can 
advertise  or  hold  a  bargain  sale  without  permis- 
sion of  the  police.  The  changed  prices  must  be 
affixed  to  the  goods  four  days  before  the  sale 
for  inspection  by  the  police,  and  only  two  such 
sales  are  permitted  a  year,  and  these  must  take 
place  either  before  February  15,  or  between 
June  15  and  August  1st.  All  particulars  of  the 
sale  must  be  handed  to  the  police  a  week  in 
advance.  In  a  carriage  on  the  Bavarian  rail- 
road, a  husband  who  kissed  and  petted  his  tired 
wife  was  complained  of  by  a  fellow-passenger. 
The  husband  was  tried,  judged  guilty,  and  fined. 
There  was  no  question  but  that  the  woman  was 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  359 

his  wife;  thus  there  is  no  loop-hole  left  for  the 
legally  curious,  and  thousands  of  male  Germans 
hug  and  kiss  one  another  on  railway-station 
platforms  who  surely  ought  to  be  fined  and  im- 
prisoned or  deported  or  hanged !  All  this  may 
be  a  relic  of  Roman  law.  Cato  dismissed  Mari- 
lius  from  the  Senate  because  he  kissed  his  own 
wife  by  daylight  in  the  presence  of  their  own 
daughter. 

Shortly  after  leaving  Germany,  I  returned 
from  a  few  weeks'  shooting  in  Scotland.  We 
bundled  out  of  the  train  onto  the  station  plat- 
form in  London.  Dogs,  gun-cases,  cartridge- 
boxes,  men  and  maid  servants,  trunks,  bags, 
baskets,  bunches  of  grouse,  and  the  passengers 
seemed  in  a  chaotic  huddle  of  confusion.  In 
Germany  at  least  twenty  policemen  would  have 
been  needed  to  disentangle  us.  I  was  so  torpid 
from  having  been  long  Teutonically  cared  for, 
that  I  looked  on  momentarily  paralyzed.  There 
was  no  shouting,  not  a  harsh  word  that  I  heard; 
and  as  I  was  almost  the  last  to  get  away,  I  can 
vouch  for  it  that  in  ten  minutes  each  had  his 
own  and  was  off.  I  had  forgotten  that  such 
things  could  be  done.  I  had  been  so  long  steeped 
in  enforced  orderliness,  that  I  had  forgotten  that 
real  orderliness  is  only  born  of  individual  self- 
control.  I  forgot  that  I  was  back  among  the 


free  spirits  who  govern  a  quarter  of  the  habitable 
globe  and  whose  descendants  are  making  Amer- 
ica; and  even  if  .here  and  there  one  or  more, 
and  they  are  often  recently  arrived  immigrants, 
are  intoxicated  by  freedom  and  shoot  or  steal 
like  drunken  men;  I  realized  that  I  am  still  an 
Occidental  barbarian,  thank  God,  preferring 
liberty,  even  though  it  is  punctuated  now  and 
then  with  shots  and  screams  and  thefts,  to 
official  guardianship,  even  though  I  am  thus 
saved  the  shooting,  the  screaming,  and  the 
thieving. 

In  the  nine  years  ending  1910,  our  Fourth  of 
July  celebrations  cost  America  in  killed,  1,800; 
in  wounded,  35,000;  but  even  that  is  better 
than  the  civic  throttling  of  the  German  method. 
It  seems  to  be  forgotten  that  the  men  who  keep 
the  world  fresh  with  their  saline  vigor,  love 
risks  as  they  love  fresh  air.  They  should  be 
curbed,  but  not  strangled! 

You  read  their  history,  you  watch  closely 
their  manners,  you  prowl  about  among  them,  in 
their  streets,  their  shops,  their  houses,  their 
theatres;  you  accompany  the  crowds  on  a  holi- 
day in  the  trains,  in  the  forests,  in  the  summer 
resorts,  at  their  concerts  or  their  picnics,  in  their 
beer-gardens  and  restaurants,  and  you  soon  see 
that  the  orderliness  is  all  forced  upon  them  from 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  361 

without,  and  not  due  to  their  own  knowledge  of 
how  to  take  care  of  themselves. 

In  a  recent  volume  by  a  distinguished  German 
prison  official  he  writes  that,  after  a  careful 
study  of  the  figures  from  1882  to  1910,  he  has 
discovered  that  one  person  now  living  in  every 
twelve  in  Germany  has  been  convicted  of  some  of- 
fence. Doctor  Finkelnburg  shows  that  the  num- 
ber of  "criminals"  in  Germany  is  3,869,000,  of 
whom  3,060,000  are  males,  and  809,000  females. 
Every  43d  boy  and  every  213th  girl  between  the 
ages  of  twelve  and  eighteen  has  been  punished 
by  fine  or  imprisonment.  This  does  not  mean 
that  the  Germans  are  criminal  or  disorderly,  but, ' 
on  the  contrary,  it  shows  how  absurdly  petty 
are  the  violations  of  the  law  punished  by  fine 
or  imprisonment. 

Their  whole  history,  from  Charlemagne  down 
until  the  last  fifty  years,  is  a  series  of  going  to 
pieces  the  moment  the  strong  hand  of  authority 
is  taken  away  from  them.  The  German,  and 
especially  the  Prussian  policeman,  has  become 
the  greatest  official  busybody  in  the  world.  No 
German's  house  is  his  castle.  The  policeman 
enters  at  will  and,  backed  by  the  authorities, 
questions  the  householder  about  his  religion,  his 
servants,  the  attendance  of  his  children  at  school, 
the  status  of  the  guests  staying  in  his  house,  and 


362    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

about  many  other  matters  besides.  If  one  of 
his  children  by  reason  of  ill  health  is  taught  at 
home,  the  authorities  demand  the  right  to  send 
an  inspector  every  six  months  to  examine  him 
or  her,  to  be  sure  that  the  child  is  properly 
taught.  The  policeman  is  in  attendance  on  the 
platform  at  every  public  meeting,  armed  with 
authority  to  close  the  meeting  if  either  speeches 
or  discussion  seem  to  him  unpatriotic,  unlawful, 
or  strife-breeding.  Professors,  pastors,  teachers 
are  all  muzzled  by  the  state,  and  must  preach  and 
teach  the  state  orthodoxy  or  go!  A  young  pro- 
fessor of  political  economy  in  Berlin  only  lately 
was  warned,  and  has  become  strangely  silent  since. 

The  de-Germanizing  of  the  German  abroad  is 
in  line  with  this,  and  a  constant  source  of  annoy- 
ance to  the  powers  that  be.  Buda-Pesth  was 
founded  by  Germans  in  1241,  and  now  not  one- 
tenth  of  the  population  is  German.  As  the 
Franks  became  French,  as  the  Long  Beards  be- 
came Italians,  so  the  Germans  become  Americans 
in  America,  English  in  England,  Austrian  and 
Bohemian  in  Austria  and  Bohemia.  It  has  been 
a  problem  to  prevent  their  becoming  Poles  where 
the  state  has  settled  Germans  for  the  distinct 
purpose  of  ousting  the  Poles. 

In  China,  in  South  America,  and  even  in 
Sumatra  I  have  heard  German  officials  tell  with 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  363 

indignation  of  how  their  compatriots  rapidly 
take  the  local  color,  and  lose  their  German 
habits  and  customs  and  point  of  view. 

One  of  the  half  dozen  best-known  bankers  in 
Berlin  has  lamented  to  me  that  he  must  change 
his  people  in  South  America  every  few  years,  as 
they  soon  go  to  pieces  there.  Army  officers 
came  home  from  China  indignant  to  find  their 
compatriots  there  speaking  English  and  unwill- 
ing even  to  speak  German.  Even  as  long  ago  as 
the  time  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  a  forgotten 
chronicler,  Adam  Junghaus  von  der  Ohritz, 
writes:  "Further,  it  is  a  misfortune  to  the  Ger- 
mans that  they  take  to  imitating  like  monkeys 
and  fools.  As  soon  as  they  come  among  other 
soldiers,  they  must  have  Spanish  or  other  out- 
landish clothes.  If  they  could  babble  foreign  lan- 
guages a  little,  they  would  associate  themselves 
with  Spaniards  and  Italians."  \Mlhelm  von 
Polentz,  in  his  "das  Land  der  Zukunft,"  writes: 
"die  Deutsch-x\merikaner  sind  fur  die  alte 
Heimat  dauernd  verloren,  politisch  ganz  und 
kulturell  beinahe  vollstandig." 

Bismarck  knew  these  people  and  the  present 
Emperor  knows  these  people,  better  than  do 
you  and  I!  Bismarck  even  insisted  upon  using 
the  German  text,  and  once  returned  a  letter  of 
congratulation  from  an  official  body  because  it 


364     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

was  written  in  the  Latin  text.  Even  the  Great 
Elector  must  have  recognized  this  weakness 
when  he  said:  "Gedenke  dass  du  bist  ein  Deut- 
scher!"  The  present  Kaiser  lends  his  whole 
social  influence  to  keep  the  Germans  German. 
He  will  have  the  bill  of  fare  in  German,  he  pre- 
fers the  dreadful  word  Mundtuch  to  napkin. 
His  officers  very  often  demand  that  the  bill  of 
fare  in  a  German  hotel  shall  be  presented  to 
them  in  German  and  not  in  French.  And  they 
are  quite  right  to  do  so,  and  quite  right  to  hang 
the  German  world  with  the  sign  "Verboten"; 
quite  right  to  distribute  titles  and  medals  and 
\  orders,  for  the  more  they  are  uniformed  and  deco- 
rated and  ticketed  and  drilled,  and  taken  care 
of,  the  better  they  like  it,  and  the  more  contented 
these  people  are.  Overorganization  has  brought 
this  about.  Their  theories  have  hardened  into 
la  veritable  imprisonment  of  the  will.  They  have 
jdrifted  away  from  Goethe's  wise  saying:  "That 
man  alone  attains  to  life  and  freedom  who  daily 
has  to  conquer  them  anew." 

Let  me  refer  again  just  here  to  the  socialist 
propaganda,  which  seems  to  the  outsider  so 
strong  here  in  Germany.  Even  this  is  far  flab- 
bier than  it  looks,  as  I  have  attempted  to  explain 
elsewhere.  In  such  strong  and  out-and-out  in- 
dustrial centres  as  Essen,  Duisburg-Mllhlheim, 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE 


365 


Saarbriicken,  and  Bochum,  where  a  vigorous 
fight  has  been  made  against  socialism,  the  fol- 
lowing are  the  figures  of  the  last  election  in  1912 
when  the  socialists  largely  increased  their  vote 
throughout  other  parts  of  Germany: 


NATIONALUBEHAL 

ZENTRUM 

SOCIALDEMOKKAT 

Essen  

25,937 

42,832 

40,503 

D  uisburg-Miihlheim 
Saarbriicken  .  . 

33,934 
25,108 

31,559 

24,228 

34,187 
4,157 

Bochum  

42,257 

37,650 

64,833 

I  cite  this  example  because  it  seems  as  though 
the  growth  of  socialism  in  Germany  were  in 
direct  contradiction  to  my  argument  that  they 
are  a  soft,  an  impressionable,  an  amenable,  and 
easily  led  and  governed  people. 

State  socialism  as  thus  far  put  into  practice 
in  Germany  is,  in  a  nutshell,  the  decision  on  the 
part  of  the  state  or  the  rulers  that  the  individual 
is  not  competent  to  spend  his  own  money,  to 
choose  his  own  calling,  to  use  his  own  time  as  he 
will,  or  to  provide  himself  for  his  own  future  and 
for  the  various  emergencies  of  life.  And  by  the 
minute  state  control,  they  are  rapidly  bringing 
the  whole  population  to  an  enfeebled  social  and 
political  condition,  where  they  can  do  nothing 
for  themselves. 


366     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

They  have  been  knocked  about  and  dragooned 
by  their  own  rulers  and,  be  it  said  and  empha- 
sized, they  have  received  certain  compensations 
and  gained  certain  advantages,  if  nothing  else 
an  orderliness,  safety,  and  care  for  the  people  by 
the  state  unequalled  elsewhere  in  the  world. 
But  there  is  no  gainsaying,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  they  have  lost  the  fruits  that  are  plucked 
by  the  nations  of  more  individualistic  training. 

They  have  clean  streets,  cheap  music  and 
drama,  and  a  veritable  mesh  of  national  educa- 
tion with  interstices  so  small  that  no  one  can 
escape,  and  they  are  coddled  in  every  direction; 
but  they  have  no  stuff  for  colonizers,  and  they 
have  been  not  infrequently  wofully  lacking  in 
stalwart  statesmen,  and  leaders. 

To  deprive  the  worker  of  his  choice  of  expendi- 
ture, by  taking  all  but  a  pittance  of  it  in  taxation, 
is  a  dangerous  deprivation  of  moral  exercise.  To 
be  able  to  choose  for  oneself  is  a  vitally  neces- 
sary appliance  in  the  moral  gymnasium,  even  if 
here  and  there  one  chooses  wrong.  It  is  a  curi- 
ous trend  of  thought  of  the  day,  which  proposes 
to  cure  social  evils  always  by  weakening,  rather 
than  by  strengthening  the  individual. 

Socialism  is  merely  a  moral  form  of  putting  a 
sharper  bit  in  humanity's  mouth;  when  of  course 
the  highest  aim,  the  optimistic  view,  is  to  train 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  367 

people  to  go  as  fast  and  straight  and  far  as  pos- 
sible, with  the  least  possible  hampering  of  their 
natural  powers  by  legislation.  "Some  men  are 
by  nature  free,  others  slaves,"  writes  Aristotle, 
but  whether  this  axiom  can  be  accepted  fully  or 
not,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  you  can  first 
dragoon  and  then  coddle  a  whole  people,  into  a 
lack  of  independence  and  a  shrinking  from  the 
responsibilities  of  freedom. 

We  are  drugging  the  people  ourselves  just  now 
with  legislation  as  a  cure  for  the  evils  of  indus- 
trialism, but  such  legislation  will  only  do  what 
soporifics  can  do,  they  numb  the  pain,  but  they 
never  bring  health.  What  a  forlorn  philosophy 
it  is!  Men  take  advantage,  rob  and  steal,  we 
say,  and  to  do  away  with  this  we  give  up  the 
fight  for  fair  play  and  orderliness  and  propose 
sweeping  away  all  the  prizes  of  life,  hoping  thus 
to  do  away  with  the  highwaymen  of  commerce 
and  finance.  If  there  is  no  booty,  there  will  be 
no  bandit,  we  say,  forgetting  altogether  the  cor- 
ollary that  if  there  are  no  prizes  there  will  be  no 
prizemen!  Neither  God  nor  Nature  gives  any- 
thing to  those  who  do  not  struggle,  and  both  God 
and  Nature  appoint  the  stern  task-master, 
Necessity,  to  see  to  it  that  we  do  struggle.  Now 
come  the  ignorant  and  the  socialists,  demanding 
that  the  state  step  in  and  roll  back  the  very  laws 


368     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  creation  by  supplying  what  is  not  earned  from 
the  surplus  of  the  strong.  Who  cannot  see  an- 
archy looming  ahead  of  this  programme,  for  it 
is  surely  a  lunatic  negation  of  all  the  laws  of  God 
and  Nature?  They  do  not  seem  to  see  either  in 
America  or  in  England  that  state  supervision 
carried  too  far  leads  straight  to  the  sanction  of 
all  the  demands  of  socialism  and  syndicalism. 
Legislation  was  never  intended  to  be  the  father 
of  a  people,  but  their  policeman.  Overlegisla- 
tion,  whether  by  an  autocrat  or  a  democratic 
state,  leads  straight  to  revolution,  to  Caesarism, 
or  to  slavery. 

In  Germany  the  state  by  giving  much  has 
gained  an  appalling  control  over  the  minute  de- 
tails of  human  intercourse.  I  am  no  philosophic 
adviser  to  the  rich;  it  is  as  the  champion  of  the 
poor  man  that  I  detest  socialism  and  all  its  works, 
for  in  the  end  it  only  leads  backward  to  slavery. 
Every  vote  the  workingman  gives  to  a  policy  of 
wider  state  control  is  another  link  for  the  chains 
that  are  meant  for  his  ankles,  his  wrists,  and  his 
neck.  If  the  state  is  to  take  care  of  me  when  I 
am  sick  or  old  or  unemployed,  it  must  necessarily 
deprive  me  of  my  liberty  when  I  am  well  and 
young  and  busy,  and  thus  make  my  very  health 
a  kind  of  sickness.  A  year  in  Germany  ought 
to  cure  any  sensible  workingman  of  the  notion 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  369 

that  the  state  is  a  better  guardian  of  his  purse 
and  his  powers  than  he  is  himself.  A  distin- 
guished German  publicist,  criticising  this  over- 
powering interference  of  the  state,  writes:  "Mir 
ist  wohl  bewusst  dass  diese  Gedanken  einstweilen 
fromme  Wiinsche  bleiben  werden:  die  Schatten 
lahmender  Miidigkeit  die  iiber  unserer  Politik 
lagern,  lassen  wenig  Hoffnung  auf  frohliche  Initi- 
ative. Allein  immer  kann  und  wird  es  nicht  so 
bleiben."  And  he  ends  with  the  ominous  words: 
"Reform  oder  Revolution!" 

One  often  hears  the  apostles  of  a  certain  kit- 
tenish humanitarianism,  talking  of  the  great  good 
that  would  result  if  we  in  America  would  provide 
light  wines  and  beer  and  music,  and  parks  and 
gardens,  for  our  people.  They  see  the  crowds  of 
men  and  women  and  children  flocking  by  thou- 
sands to  such  resorts  in  Germany,  where  they 
eat  tons  of  cakes  and  Brodchens  and  jam,  and 
where  they  drink  gallons  of  beer  and  wine,  and 
where  they  sit  hour  after  hour  apparently  quite 
content.  Why,  Lord  love  you,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, our  populace  would  never  be  content  with 
such  mild  amusements!  Fancy  "Silver  Dollar" 
Sullivan  or  "Bath-house"  John  attempting  to 
cajole  their  cohorts  in  such  fashion! 

It  may  be  a  pity  that  our  people  are  not  thus 
easily  amused,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  means 


370     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

simply  that  our  energy,  our  vitality,  our  national 
nervousness  if  you  like,  will  not  be  so  easily 
satisfied.  Our  disorderly  nervousness,  or  ner- 
vous disorderliness,  though  it  has  been  a  tre- 
mendous asset  in  keeping  us  bounding  along  in- 
dustrially and  commercially,  and  though  it  gives 
an  exhilarating,  champagne-like  flavor  to  our 
atmosphere,  has  cost  us  dear.  If  you  will  have 
freedom,  you  will  have  those  who  are  ruined  by 
it;  just  as,  if  you  will  have  social  and  political 
servitude,  you  will  have  a  stodgy,  unindependent 
populace. 

Only  one  out  of  sixty  perpetrators  of  homi- 
cidal crime  suffers  the  extreme  penalty  attach- 
ing to  such  crimes  in  America,  and  these  figures, 
I  admit,  are  a  shocking  revelation  of  supine  jus- 
tice and  sentimental  executive,  as  when  politics 
can  even  bend  our  President  to  grant  silly  par- 
dons, with  baleful  results  upon  the  doings  of 
other  wealthy  criminals.  We  use  as  large  an 
amount  of  habit-forming  drugs  per  capita  as  is 
used  in  the  Chinese  empire,  so  says  Dr.  Wright, 
who  was  commissioned  by  the  State  Department 
to  gather  facts  on  this  subject.  We  import  and 
consume  500,000  pounds  of  opium  yearly, 
when  70,000  pounds,  including  its  derivatives 
and  preparations,  should  suffice  for  our  medical 
needs.  In  the  year  1910  no  less  than  185,000 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  371 

ounces  of  cocaine  were  imported,  manufactured, 
and  consumed,  although  15,000  ounces  would 
supply  every  legitimate  need.  America  col- 
lected $340,000,000  from  tariff  taxes  in  1911, 
and  $40,000,000  of  this  from  tobacco  and 
alcoholics. 

My  readers  may  look  back  to  the  title  of  this 
chapter  and  ask:  What  has  all  this  to  do  with 
the  status  of  women  in  Germany?  I  have  told 
you  in  these  few  pages  the  whole  secret.  The 
men  are  not  independent;  what  can  you  expect 
of  the  women !  The  men  have,  until  very  lately, 
had  no  surplus  wealth  or  leisure,  and  have  now, 
to  all  appearance,  little  surplus  vitality  or  energy. 
Germany  is  getting  to  be  a  very  tired-looking 
nation.  One  hears  almost  as  little  laughter  in 
Germany  as  in  India.  Gayety  and  laughter  are 
the  bubbles  and  foam  on  the  glass  of  life,  proving 
that  it  is  charged  with  energy.  Do  not  believe 
me,  although  I  have  carefully  watched  many 
thousands  of  Germans  in  all  parts  of  Germany 
taking  their  pleasure  and  their  ease;  come  over 
and  see  for  yourself!  These  thousands  at  their 
simple  recreations  are  not  gay.  I  grant  the 
dangers  we  run  by  the  opposite  policy,  but  these 
are  the  results  we  have  to  fear  from  the  German 
methods. 

It  is  the  men  who  must  supply  the  leisure,  the 


372     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

independence,  the  setting,  the  background  for 
the  women.  All  Europe  says  that  our  women 
are  spoiled,  that  they  are  tyrants,  that  they 
treat  us  men  badly,  that  they  flout  us,  do  not 
do  their  duty  by  us,  and  finally  divorce  us.  We 
can  afford  to  let  them  say  it!  We  have  given 
our  women  an  independence  that  many  of  them 
abuse,  it  is  true.  We  perhaps  give  them  more 
than  their  share  to  spend,  and  more  of  luxury 
than  is  good  for  them;  and  all  too  many  of  the 
underbred  among  them  paint  and  be  jewel  and 
begown  themselves  to  imitate  the  lecherous  bar- 
barism of  the  too  free.  But  one  of  the  greatest 
ladies  in  Germany  tells  me,  "I  am  never  so  flat- 
tered as  when  I  am  taken  for  an  American!"  I 
can  pay  her  no  handsomer  compliment  than  to 
reply  that  she  is  worthy  of  the  mistake.  Our 
women  revive  the  drooping  dukedoms  of  Eng- 
land, and  few  will  maintain  that  some  of  them 
at  least  are  unsuited  to  the  position.  I  have 
seen  them  in  Germany  as  Frau  Grafin  this  or 
that,  and  not  only  their  appearance  but  their 
house-keeping  machinery,  running  noiselessly 
and  accurately,  proves  that  there  is  something 
more  than  dollars  behind  them. 

One  of  the  rare  human  beings  whom  I  have 
known,  who  has  at  the  same  time  the  character- 
istics of  the  generous  comrade,  the  good  fellow, 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  373 

and  the  fine  gentleman;  who  in  moral  courage 
in  time  of  terrible  strain,  or  in  physical  courage 
when  one's  back  is  to  the  wall,  never  quailed, 
is  an  American  woman;  and  thousands  of  my 
countrymen  will  say  the  same. 

You  cannot  produce  this  type  without  free- 
dom, without  giving  them  opportunity,  and 
taking  the  risks  that  are  inherent  in  giving  free 
scope  to  personal  prowess.  But  they  are  not  the 
women  whom  our  blatant  newspapers  exploit, 
nor  the  women  who  buy  the  British  aristocracy 
to  launch  them  socially,  nor  the  women  who 
pervade  the  continental  hotels  and  restaurants, 
nor  the  women  whom  as  a  rule  the  foreigner 
has  the  opportunity  to  meet.  They  are  the 
women  who  have  helped  us  to  absorb  the 
21,000,000  aliens  who  have  entered  America 
since  the  Civil  War;  the  women  who  stood  be- 
hind us  when  we  fought  out  that  war  for  four 
years,  leaving  a  million  men  on  the  fields  of 
battle;  the  women  who  in  the  realm  of  house- 
keeping, to  come  down  to  practical  levels,  have 
revolutionized  these  duties  and  turned  a  drudgery 
into  an  art  as  have  no  other  women  in  the  world. 
The  best  answer  the  American  can  make  to  the 
luxurious  lawlessness  of  some  of  our  women,  is  to 
point  to  the  house-keeping  and  home-making  of 
his  compatriots,  not  only  at  home  but  right  here 


374     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

in  Germany.  Fifty  years  ago  it  could  not  have 
been  said,  but  to-day  there  is  no  doubt  in  my 
mind  that  American  house-keeping  is  the  best 
in  the  world.  In  comfort,  in  the  smooth  run- 
ning of  the  household  machinery,  in  good  food 
and  drink,  perhaps  in  too  lavish  and  too  luxurious 
hospitality,  we  are  nowadays  almost  in  a  class 
by  ourselves  in  matters  of  housewifery. 

The  English  attitude  of  women  toward  men  is 
somewhat  that  of  comradeship,  and  once  mar- 
ried the  man's  comfort  is  looked  after  with  some 
care;  the  American  attitude  of  women  toward 
men,  in  the  more  luxurious  circles,  is  often,  I 
admit,  that  of  a  spoiled  child  toward  a  gift- 
bringing  uncle,  and  she  permits  him  to  worship 
her  along  the  lines  of  a  restricted  rubric;  but  in 
Germany  the  subordination,  the  unquestioning 
and  unthinking  adulation,  the  blind  acceptance 
of  inferiority  have  not  only  softened  the  men 
but  robbed  the  women  of  even  sufficient  inde- 
pendence to  make  them  the  helpmates  that  they 
try  to  be.  There  have  been  women  of  social  and 
even  political  influence:  Bettina  von  Arnim, 
Caroline  Schlegel,  Charlotte  Stieglitz,  Rahel 
Varnhagen,  and  lately  Frau  Lebin,  who  seems 
to  have  been  a  soothing  adjunct  of  the  Foreign 
Office.  It  is  rather  as  admirers  than  as  execu- 
tives that  they  shine.  Their  attitude  toward  the 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  375 

great  Goethe,  and  his  nonchalant  polygamy  to- 
ward them,  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand  and 
approve. 

"  The  gentle  Henrietta  then, 
And  a  third  Mary  next  did  reign, 
And  Joan  and  Jane  and  Andria; 
And  then  a  pretty  Thomasine, 
And  then  another  Katherine, 
And  then  a  long  et  cetera." 

No  real  man  is  a  misogynist,  for  not  to  like 
women  is  not  to  be  a  man.  There  are,  how- 
ever, many  men,  both  in  Germany  and  out  of  it, 
who  greatly  dislike  sham  women;  that  is,  women 
who  shirk  their  functional  responsibilities.  This 
form  of  dislike  is  a  healthy  instinct.  Women 
are  given  the  greatest  and  most  inspiring  of  all 
tasks:  to  make  men;  and  a  woman  who  cannot 
make  a  man,  by  giving  birth  to  one,  or  by  de- 
veloping one  as  son  or  husband,  has  failed  more 
deplorably  even  than  a  man  who  cannot  make  a 
living.  This  task  of  theirs  constitutes  a  superi- 
ority impossible  to  deny  or  to  overcome.  A 
woman,  therefore,  who  craves  man's  activities 
and  standards  is  as  foolish  as  though  a  wheat- 
field  should  long  to  be  a  bakery.  Most  healthy- 
minded  men  hold  this  view,  though  some  of  us 
may  think  that  German  men  overemphasize  it. 

The  coarse  sentimentality  of  the  lower  classes 


376     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

has  been  noted,  but  it  is  not  confined  to  them. 
The  premarital  relations  of  all  but  the  most  cult- 
ured and  experienced,  are  marked  by  a  mawkish 
sweetness  which  is  all  the  more  noticeable  in 
contrast  with  the  dull  routine  of  saving  and 
slaving  which  follows.  She  begins  by  being 
photographed  sitting  in  her  hero's  lap,  and  ends 
by  sitting  on  the  less  comfortable  chair  to  darn 
his  socks  and  to  tend  his  babies.  There  are 
women  enthroned,  and  who  deserve  to  be,  in 
Germany  as  in  other  countries ;  but  taken  in  the 
mass,  speaking  in  hundreds  of  thousands,  it  is 
not  an  inaccurate  picture  to  say  that  the  women 
are  not  taken  seriously  in  Germany  except  as 
mothers  and  servants. 

The  census  of  1910  shows  that  there  are 
32,040,166  men  in  Germany  and  32,885,827 
women,  or  845,661  more  women  than  men. 
_J  The  number  of  men  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  women  is  steadily  increasing  in  Germany, 
showing  that  the  habits  of  the  men  are  more  and 
more  feminine,  that  the  state  provides  for  them 
and  protects  them,  and  that  the  women  take 
good  care  of  them. 

In  a  virile  state,  where  the  men  take  risks, 
where  they  play  hazardous  games,  wrhere  they 
travel  and  seek  adventure,  where  they  emigrate 
to  seek  new  opportunities,  the  women  will  greatly 


THE  DISTAFF  SIDE  377 

outnumber  the  men.  The  excess  of  females  in 
England  and  Wales  in  1871  was  594,000;  in  1881, 
694,000;  in  1891,  896,000;  in  1911,  1,178,000. 
The  United  Kingdom  has  the  largest  surplus  of 
women  of  leisure  in  the  world,  and  just  now  they 
are  taking  advantage  of  their  numerical  superior- 
ity in  the  most  delightful  and  comical  feminine 
fashion.  They  are  proving  their  right  to  assist  in 
coercing  others  to  obey  the  laws,  by  disobeying 
the  laws  themselves.  By  pouring  vitriol  on  golf- 
greens,  by  pinning  their  defiance  to  these  di- 
shevelled greens  with  hair-pins,  they  propose  to 
provoke  the  recalcitrant  to  recognition  of  their 
right  to  pin  their  names  to  seats  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  It  is  all  so  sweetly  feminine,  that 
the  stranger  is  astonished  to  hear  such  women 
dubbed  unwomanly.  Pray,  what  could  be  more 
womanly  in  England,  than  to  pin  a  protest  to  a 
golf -green  with  a  hair-pin! 

The  German  army,  which  is  in  itself  a  school  of 
hygiene  for  the  man,  where  the  death-rate  is  the 
lowest  of  any  army  in  Europe,  and  the  many  pro- 
visions for  the  state  care  of  the  population,  all  go 
to  coddle  the  men  and  protect  them.  The  va- 
rious forms  of  labor  insurance  alone  in  Germany 
cost  the  state  over  $250,000  a  day,  and  if  we  in- 
clude the  amount  expended  in  compensation  in 
all  its  forms,  the  yearly  bill  of  the  state  for  the  care 
of  its  sick,  injured  and  aged,  amounts  to  nearly 


378     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

$170,000,000.  No  wonder  that  between  the  care 
of  a  grandmotherly  state,  and  the  attentions  of 
a  subservient  womankind,  the  male  population 
increases.  I  sometimes  question  whether  there 
is  not  something  of  the  hot-house  culture  about 
this  male  crop.  Certainly  consumption  and 
other  diseases  are  very  wide-spread.  A  very 
detailed  and  careful  investigation  of  certain 
forms  of  weakness  is  being  made  by  our  Rocke- 
feller Institute  at  this  time,  and  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken in  the  results  of  what  these  investigations 
have  thus  far  disclosed,  it  will  be  found  that 
Germany  has  her  full  share  of  rottenness  to  deal 
with.  To  those  who  care  to  corroborate  these 
hints  with  facts  I  recommend  the  reading  of 
certain  recent  numbers  of  the  hygienic  Rund- 
schau, a  German  technical  magazine  of  repute. 

There  is  a  lack  of  vitality  and  elasticity,  a 
stodgy,  plodding  way  of  working,  much  indul- 
gence in  gregarious  eating  and  drinking,  and  very 
mild  forms  of  exercise  and  holiday-making,  com- 
paratively little  sport,  almost  no  game-playing 
where  boys  and  men  hustle  one  another  about 
as  in  foot-ball  and  polo,  and  very  long  hours  of 
\  application,  from  the  school-boy  to  the  ministers 
of  state,  all  of  which  tend  to  and  do  produce  a 
physical  lack  of  alertness,  vivacity,  and  audacity 
in  the  men  of  practically  all  classes. 

The  way  to  see  the  people  of  a  country  is  to 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  379 

i 
stand  by  the  hour  in  the  large  industrial  towns 

and  watch  them  as  they  go  to  and  from  their 
work;  to.  watch  them  flocking  in  and  out  of 
railway  stations,  and  at  work  in  large  numbers 
in  the  fields  of  Saxony,  Silesia,  and  other  parts 
of  Prussia;  to  spend  hours,  and  I  admit  that 
they  are  tedious  hours,  strolling  through  fac- 
tories, ship-yards,  mines,  and  offices,  paying  no 
attention  to  the  talk  of  your  guide,  but  studying 
the  faces  and  physique  of  the  men  and  women. 
Having  done  this,  an  impartial  observer  is  bound 
to  remark  that  industrial  and  commercial  Ger- 
many is  taking  a  tremendous  toll  for  the  rapid 
progress  she  has  made.  It  may  be  no  worse 
here  than  elsewhere,  but  neither  has  the  problem 
of  a  healthy,  happy,  toiling  population  been 
satisfactorily  solved  here,  though  perhaps  better 
here  than  elsewhere.  I  have  heard  the  women 
and  girls  in  factories  singing  at  their  work,  but 
the  bird  is  no  less  caged  because  it  sings. 

Men  who  ought  to  know  better  set  an  exam- 
ple of  long  hours  of  confinement  at  their  work 
which  is  quite  unnecessary.  They  tell  you  with 
pride  that  they  are  at  it  from  eight  or  nine  in  the 
morning  till  seven  and  often  till  later  at  night. 
That  is  something  that  no  sane  man  ought  to 
be  proud  of.  On  investigation  you  find  that  in 
industrial  and  commercial  circles,  and  in  the 


380     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

offices  of  the  state,  men  take  two  hours  for 
luncheon  and  then  return  to  work  till  nightfall. 
Two  hours  in  the  open  air  at  the  end  of  the  day 
could  be  managed  easily,  but  they  do  not  want 
it.  There  is  no  vitality  left  for  a  game,  for  exer- 
cise, for  a  bath,  and  a  change. 

They  drug  themselves  with  work,  and  slip 
away  to  the  theatre,  to  a  concert,  to  a  Verein  or 
circle,  unwashed,  ungroomed,  and  physically 
torpid,  and  the  great  mass  of  the  population, 
high  and  low  alike,  outside  the  army  officers, 
look  it. 

The  army  officer's  career  is  dependent  upon 
his  mental  and  physical  vigor.  The  cylinder  is 
quickly  handed  him  and  the  helmet  taken  away 
if  he  grows  too  fat  and  too  slow  physically  and 
mentally.  There  is  no  nepotism,  no  favoritism, 
and  on  reaching  a  certain  rank  he  goes,  if  he  falls 
below  the  standard  required,  and  consequently 
he  keeps  himself  fit.  But  a  huge  bureaucracy, 
with  its  stupid  promotions  by  years  and  not  by 
ability,  with  its  government  stroke,  and  its  dan- 
gling pensions,  positively  breeds  lassitude,  lazi- 
ness, and  dulness.  You  may  see  it  on  every  hand 
in  government  offices,  in  the  railway  and  postal 
services,  where  men  are  evidently  kept  on  not 
for  their  fitness  but  by  the  tyranny  of  the  sys- 
tem. High  officials  admit  as  much. 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  381 

In  the  little  state  of  Prussia  the  railways  pay 
well  and  are  well  managed,  but  they  are  clogged 
to  a  certain  extent  by  inefficient  and  unnecessary 
employees,  and  were  the  system  spread  over  the 
United  States  the  chaos  in  a  dozen  years  would 
be  almost  irreparable,  and  even  here  the  com- 
plaints are  many  and  vigorous.  Probably  one 
male  over  twenty-five  years  of  age  out  of  every 
four  is  in  government  employ.  This  alone  would 
account  for  the  general  air  of  lassitude  which  is 
one  of  the  most  noticeable  features  of  German 
life.  The  Germans  as  a  whole  are  beginning 
to  look  tired.  It  is  a  German,  not  an  Italian  or 
a  Frenchman,  the  philosopher  Nietzsche,  who 
writes:  "Seit  es  Menschen  giebt,  hat  der 
Mensch  sich  zu  wenig  gefreut;  das  allein  ist 
unsere  Erbsiinde." 

There  has  been  a  great  change  in  the  status  of 
women  in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  The  ap- 
ophthegm of  Pericles,  or  rather  of  Thucydides, 
"that  woman  is  best  who  is  least  spoken  of 
among  men,  either  for  good  or  evil,"  is  not  so 
rigidly  enforced.  Increased  \vealth  throughout 
Germany  has  left  the  German  woman  more  lei- 
sure from  the  drudgery  of  the  home.  She  is  not 
so  wholly  absorbed  by  the  duties  of  nurse,  cook, 
and  house-maid  as  she  once  was.  But  even  to- 
day her  economies  and  her  ability  to  keep  her 


382    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

house  with  little  outside  assistance  are  amazing. 
Some  of  the  most  delightful  meals  I  have  taken, 
have  been  in  professional  households,  where  small 
incomes  made  it  necessary  that  wife  and  daugh- 
ters should  do  most  of  the  work. 

The  German  professor  has  his  faults,  but  in 
his  own  simple  home,  the  work  of  the  day  behind 
him,  his  family  about  him  at  his  well-filled  but 
not  luxurious  board,  with  some  member  of  the 
family  not  unlikely  to  be  an  accomplished  musi- 
cian and  with  his  own  unrivalled  store  of  learning 
at  your  service,  when  he  raises  his  glass  to  you, 
filled  with  his  best,  with  a  smile  and  a  hearty 
"  Prosit,"  he  is  hard  to  beat  as  a  host,  to  my 
thinking.  Perhaps  there  is  nothing  like  over- 
indulgence to  make  one  crave  simplicity,  and 
no  doubt  this  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the 
really  great  ones  of  earth  are  satisfied  and  happy 
with  enough,  and  abhor  too  much. 

They  tell  me  that  the  Dienstmtiflchen  is  no 
longer  what  she  used  to  be,  but  to  my  untutored 
eye  her  duties  still  seem  to  be  as  comprehensive 
as  those  of  a  Sioux  squaw,  and  her  performances 
unrivalled.  As  is  to  be  expected,  Germany  is 
not  blessed  with  trained  servants.  They  are 
helpers  rather  than  professional  servants.  In 
the  scores  of  houses,  public  and  private,  where 
I  have  been  a  guest,  only  in  one  or  two  had  the 


THE  DISTAFF  SIDE  383 

servants  more  than  an  alphabetical  knowledge 
of  what  was  due  to  one's  clothes  and  shoes. 
The  servants  are  rigidly  protected  by  the  state: 
they  must  have  so  much  time  off,  they  cannot 
be  dismissed  without  weeks  of  warning,  and  they 
themselves  carry  books  with  their  moral  and 
professional  biographies  therein,  which  are  al- 
ways open  to  the  inspection  of  the  police;  and 
they  must  all  be  insured. 

In  many  towns,  and  cities  too,  there  are  hos- 
pitals and  bands  of  nurses  who  for  a  small  annual 
payment  undertake  to  take  over  and  care  for  a 
sick  servant.  If  the  doctor  prescribes  a  "cure" 
for  your  servant,  away  she  goes  at  the  expense 
of  the  state  to  be  taken  care  of.  Wages  are  very 
small  as  compared  with  ours.  Ten  dollars  a 
month  for  a  cook,  five  for  a  house-maid,  ten  for 
a  man-servant,  forty  to  fifty  for  a  chauffeur,  and 
of  course  more  in  the  larger  and  more  luxurious 
establishments;  though  a  chef  who  serves  din- 
ners for  forty  and  fifty  in  an  official  household  I 
know  is  content  with  twenty  dollars  a  month. 
A  nursery  governess  can  be  had  for  twelve,  and 
a  well-educated  English  governess  for  twenty 
dollars  a  month.  Even  these  wages  are  higher 
than  ten  years  ago.  To  be  more  explicit,  in  a 
small  household  where  three  servants  are  kept 
the  cook  receives  30  marks,  the  maid-servant  25 


384     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

marks,  and  the  nursery  governess  35  marks  a 
month.  In  the  household  of  an  official  of  some 
means  the  man-servant  receives  45  marks,  the 
cook  30  marks,  and  the  maid-servant  30  marks 
a  month.  When  dinners  or  other  entertainments 
are  given,  outside  help  is  called  in.  In  the  house- 
hold of  a  rich  industrial,  whose  family  consists 
of  himself,  wife,  and  four  children,  the  man- 
servant receives  80  marks,  the  chauffeur  200, 
the  cook  45,  the  lady's  maid  35,  the  house-maid 
25,  kitchen-maid  12,  and  the  governess  30  marks 
a  month. 

I  carry  away  with  me  delightful  pictures  of 
German  households,  big,  little,  and  medium;  and 
though  it  does  not  fit  in  nicely  with  my  main 
argument,  households  whose  mistresses  were  pat- 
terns of  what  a  chatelaine  should  be.  But  I 
must  leave  that  loop-hole  for  the  critics,  for  I 
am  trying  only  to  tell  the  truth  and  to  be  fair, 
and  not  to  be  scientific  or  to  bolster  up  a 
thesis. 

I  can  see  the  big  castle,  centuries  old,  with  its 
rambling  buildings  winging  away  from  it  on 
every  side,  and  in  the  court-yard  its  regal-looking 
mistress  positively  garlanded  with  her  dozen 
children.  There  is  no  sign  of  the  decadence  of 
the  aristocracy  here.  We  sit  down  twenty  or 
more  every  day  at  the  family  luncheon.  Tutors 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  385 

and  governesses  are  at  every  turn.  A  French 
abbe,  as  silken  in  manner  and  speech  as  his  own 
soutane,  bowls  over  all  my  prejudices  of  creed 
and  custom,  as  I  watch  him  rule  with  the  lightest 
of  hands  and  the  softest  of  voices  a  brood  of  ter- 
magant small  boys;  to  turn  from  this  to  a  game 
of  billiards,  and  from  that  to  the  Merry  Widow 
waltz  on  the  piano,  that  we  may  dance.  An 
aide-de-camp  trained  in  India  and  a  French 
abbe,  I  am  convinced  that  these  are  the  apo- 
theosis of  luxury  in  a  large  household.  My 
Protestant  brethren  would,  I  am  sure,  throw 
their  prejudices  to  the  winds  could  they  spend 
an  evening  with  my  friend,  Monsieur  1'Abbe! 
Nor  Erasmus,  nor  Luther,  nor  Calvin  would  have 
had  the  heart  to  burn  him.  He  is  just  as  good 
a  fellow  as  we  are,  knows  far  more,  can  turn  his 
hand  to  anything  from  photography  to  the  driv- 
ing of  a  stubborn  pony,  knows  his  world  as  few 
know  it,  and  yet  is  inviolably  not  of  it.  I  have 
chatted  with  Jesuit  priests  teaching  our  Western 
Indians;  I  have  travelled  with  a  preaching  friar 
in  Italy  on  his  round  of  sermonizing;  I  have  seen 
them  in  South  America,  in  India,  China,  and 
Japan,  and  I  recognize  and  acclaim  their  self- 
denying  prowess,  but  no  one  of  them  was  a  more 
dangerous  missionary  than  my  last-named  friend 
among  them,  Monsieur  PAbbe! 


386     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"For  ever  through  life  the  Cure  goes 

With  a  smile  on  his  kind  old  face — 
With  his  coat  worn  bare,  and  his  straggling  hair, 
And  his  green  umbrella-case." 

There  was  a  profusion  at  this  castle,  a  hearti- 
ness of  welcome,  a  patriarchal  attitude  toward 
the  countless  servants  and  satellites,  an  acreage 
of  roaming  space  in  the  buildings,  that  smacked 
of  the  feudalism  back  to  which  both  the  castle 
and  the  family  dated.  How  many  Englishmen 
or  Americans  who  sniff  at  German  civilization 
ever  see  anything  of  the  inside  of  German  homes? 
Very  few,  I  should  judge,  from  the  lame  talk  and 
writing  on  the  subject.  Let  us  go  from  this  me- 
diaeval setting  for  modern  comfort  to  a  smaller 
establishment.  Here  a  miniature  Germania, 
with  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair,  presides,  looking 
like  a  shaft  of  sunlight  in  front  of  you  as  she 
leads  the  way  about  the  paths  of  her  gloomy 
forest.  In  these,  and  in  not  a  few  other  houses, 
there  is  little  luxury,  no  waste,  a  certain  Spartan 
air  of  training,  but  abundance  of  what  is  neces- 
sary and  a  cheery  and  frank  welcome. 

I  sometimes  think  the  Germans  themselves 
lose  much  by  their  rather  overdeveloped  ten- 
dency to  meet  not  so  often  in  one  another's 
homes  as  in  a  neutral  place:  a  restaurant,  a 
garden,  a  Verein  or  circle,  of  which  there  is  an  in- 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  387 

terminable  number.  You  certainly  get  to  know 
a  man  best  and  at  his  best  in  his  own  home,  and 
you  never  get  to  know  a  wife  and  a  mother  out 
of  that  environment;  for  a  woman  is  even  more 
dependent  than  a  man  upon  the  sympathetic 
atmosphere  that  frames  her.  I  should  be,  after 
my  experience,  and  I  am,  the  last  person  in  the 
world  to  say  that  the  Germans  are  not  hospitable; 
but  there  is  much  less  visiting  even  among  them- 
selves, and  much  less  of  constant  reception  of 
strangers  in  their  homes,  than  with  us.  Habit, 
lack  of  wealth,  lack  of  trained  servants,  and  a 
certain  proud  shyness,  and  in  some  cases  indiffer- 
ence and  a  lack  of  vitality  which  welcomes  the 
trouble  of  being  host,  account  for  this.  No 
doubt,  too,  the  old  habit  of  economy  remains 
even  when  there  is  no  longer  the  same  necessity 
for  it,  and  saving  and  gayety  do  not  go  well 
together.  In  Geldsachen  hort  die  Gemuthlichkeit 
auf. 

I  should  be  sorry  to  spoil  my  picture  by  the 
overemphasis  of  details.  The  reader  will  not  see 
what  I  have  intended  to  paint,  if  he  gets  only 
an  impression  of  caution,  of  economy,  of  sordid- 
ness  and  fatigue.  No  nation  that  gives  birth  to 
an  untranslatable  word  like  Gemuthlichkeit  can 
be  without  that  characteristic.  The  English 
words  "home"  and  "comfort,"  the  French  word 


388     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"esprit,"  and  the  German  word  Gemiithlichkeit 
have  no  exact  equivalents  in  other  languages. 
This  in  itself  is  a  sure  sign  of  a  quality  in  the 
nation  which  bred  the  word.  The  difficulty  lies 
in  the  fact  that  another  language  is  another  life. 
The  Germans  are  not  cheerful  as  we  are  cheer- 
ful; they  are  not  happy  as  we  are  happy;  they 
are  not  free  as  we  are  free;  they  are  not  polite 
as  we  are  polite;  they  are  not  contented  as  we 
are  contented;  and  no  one  for  a  moment  who  is 
even  an  amateur  observer  and  an  amateur  phi- 
lologist combined  would  claim  that  the  three 
words,  love  and  amour  and  Liebe  mean  the  same 
thing.  No  word  in  the  English  language  is  used 
so  often  from  the  pulpit  as  the  word  love,  but 
this  cannot  be  said  of  the  use  of  amour  in  France 
or  of  Liebe  in  Germany.  Nations  pour  them- 
selves into  the  tiny  moulds  of  words  and  give  us 
statuettes  of  themselves.  The  Anglo-Saxon,  the 
Latin,  and  the  Teuton  have  filled  these  three 
words  with  a  certain  vague  philosophy  of  them- 
selves, a  hazy  composite  photograph  of  them- 
selves. No  one  writer  or  painter,  no  one  incident, 
no  one  tragedy,  no  one  day  or  year  of  history 
has  done  this.  To  us,  love  is  the  coldest,  clean- 
est, as  it  is  perhaps  the  most  loyal  of  the  three. 
L 'amour  sounds  to  us  seductive,  enticing,  often 
indeed  little  more  than  lust  embroidered  to  make 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  389 

a  cloak  for  ennui.     Liebe  is  to  us  friendly,  soft, 
childlike. 

The  nations  of  the  earth,  close  as  they  are  to- 
gether in  these  days,  are  worlds  apart  in  thought. 
Each  builds  its  life  in  words,  and  the  words  are 
as  little  alike  as  in  the  days  of  Babel;  and  thus 
it  comes  about  that  we  misunderstand  one  an- 
other. We  translate  one  another  only  into  our 
own  language,  and  understand  one  another  as 
little  as  before,  because  we  only  know  one  an- 
other in  translations,  and  the  best  of  the  life  of 
each  nation  remains  and  always  will  remain  un- 
translatable. No  one  has  ever  really  translated 
the  Greek  lyrics  or  the  choruses  of  JEschylus,  or 
the  incomparable  songs  of  Heine.  Who  could 
dream  of  putting  the  best  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  into  German,  or  Kipling's  rollicking 
ballads  of  soldier  life  into  Spanish,  or  Walter 
Pater  into  Dutch,  or  Edgar  Allan  Poe  into  Rus- 
sian! The  one  language  common  to  us  all, 
music,  tells  as  many  tales  as  there  are  men  to 
hear.  Each  melody  melts  into  the  blackness  or 
the  brightness  of  the  listener's  soul  and  becomes 
a  thousand  melodies  instead  of  one.  What  does 
the  moaning  monotony  of  a  Korean  love-song 
mean  to  the  westerner,  or  what  does  the  Swan 
song  mean  to  the  Korean?  Only  God  knows. 
We  can  never  translate  one  nation  into  the  Ian- 


1390     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

guage  of  another;  our  best  is  only  an  interpreta- 
tion, and  we  must  always  meet  the  criticism  that 
we  have  failed  with  the  reply  that  we  had  never 
hoped  to  succeed.  We  are  forever  explaining 
ourselves  even  in  our  own  small  circles ;  how  can 
we  dare  to  suggest  even,  that  we  have  made  one 
people  to  speak  clearly  in  the  language  of  an- 
other? The  best  we  can  do  is  to  give  a  kindly, 
a  good-humored,  and,  at  all  times  and  above  all 
things,  a  charitable  interpretation.  Informa- 
tion, facts,  are  merely  the  raw  material  of  cult- 
ure; sympathy  is  its  subtlest  essence. 

There  is  a  world  of  good  humor,  of  cheerful- 
ness, of  contentment,  of  domestic  peace  and 
happiness  in  Germany.  There  are  courtesy, 
politeness,  even  grand  manners  here  and  there. 
But  these  words  mean  one  thing  to  them,  another 
thing  to  us,  and  it  is  that  I  am  striving,  feebly 
enough  to  be  sure,  to  make  clear.  May  I  beg 
the  reader  and  the  student  to  follow  me  with 
this  point  clearly  in  mind?  While  I  am  out- 
lining with  these  painful  details  that  their  ways 
are  not  as  our  ways,  I  am  not  denouncing  their 
ways,  but  merely  offering  matter  for  considera- 
tion and  comparison. 

A  nation  is  most  often  punished  for  its  faults 
by  the  exaggeration  of  its  qualities,  and  if,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  Germany  suffers  like  the  rest  of 


THE  DISTAFF  SIDE  391 

us  in  this  respect,  it  is  none  of  my  doing.  It 
will  be  my  failure  and  the  reader's  failure,  if  we 
do  not  profit  by  watching  these  qualities  in 
ourselves,  and  in  others  festering  into  faults. 
Woman's  position  and  ambitions,  the  home,  the 
amusements,  and  the  satisfactions  of  life,  are 
very  different  in  Germany  from  ours.  I  note 
these  as  facts,  not  as  inferiorities.  I  note,  too, 
that  in  Germany,  as  elsewhere,  Hegel  was  pro- 
foundly right  in  his  dictum,  that  everything  car- 
ried to  its  extreme  becomes  its  contrary.  Too. 
much  caution  may  become  a  positive  menace  to 
safety;  too  much  orderliness  may  result  in  in- 
dividual incapacity  for  self-control;  just  as 
liberty  rots  into  license,  and  demos  descends  to 
a  crown  and  sceptre  and  tyranny.  I  am  merely 
calling  attention  to  this  great  law  of  national 
development,  that  the  exaggeration  of  even  fine 
qualities  is  the  road  to  the  punishment  of  our 
faults,  in  Germany,  as  in  every  other  nation  under 
the  sun. 

It  is  only  when  you  have  had  a  peep  into  a 
small  farmer's  house  in  Saxony,  into  the  artisans' 
houses  in  the  busy  Rhine  and  Westphalia  coun- 
try; spent  a  night  in  a  peasant's  house  and 
stable,  for  they  are  under  the  same  roof,  in  the 
mountains  of  the  South;  and  visited  the  greater 
establishments  of  the  large  land-holder  and  the 


392     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

less  pretentious  houses  of  the  gentleman  farmer, 
and  the  country  houses,  big  and  little,  in  all  parts 
of  Germany,  that  you  get  anything  of  the  real 
flavor  of  Germany. 

If,  as  Burke  says,  it  is  impossible  to  indict  a 
whole  nation,  it  is  even  more  difficult  to  fit  a 
people  with  a  few  discriminating  and  really  en- 
lightening adjectives.  One  word  I  dare  to  apply 
to  them  all,  though  I  know  well  how  differ- 
ent they  are  in  the  north  and  south  and  east 
and  west,  as  diversified  indeed  as  any  nation  in 
the  world,  and  that  is  the  word  patient.  They 
can  stand  longer,  sit  longer,  eat  longer,  drink 
longer,  work  longer  hours,  and  dream  longer,  and 
dawdle  longer  than  any  people  except  the  Ori- 
entals. This  custom  may  date  back  to  far  dis- 
tant times.  Sitting,  in  the  Greek  view,  was  a 
posture  of  supplication  (Odyssey,  XIV,  29-31). 
The  Emperor  himself  sets  the  example.  He  is 
an  indefatigable  stander,  if  I  may  coin  the  word, 
and  on  horseback  he  can  apparently  spend  the 
day  and  night  without  inconvenience.  Their  pa- 
tient quarry  work  in  archaeology  and  in  com- 
parative philology  laid  the  foundations  for  the 
new  history -writing  of  Heeren  and  Mommsen; 
and  their  scholarship  to-day  is  still  of  the  digging 
kind.  They  seldom  produce  a  Jebb,  a  Jowett, 
a  Verrall,  and  never  that  type  of  scholar,  wit 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  393 

and  poet  combined,  a  Lowell  or  an  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough.  Indeed,  with  a  suspicious  self-con- 
sciousness the  German  professional  mind  inclines 
to  be  contemptuous  of  any  learning  that  is  not 
unpalatably  dry.  What  men  can  read  with  en- 
joyment cannot  be  learning,  they  maintain. 

I  have  visited  half  a  dozen  hospitals,  and  on 
one  or  two  occasions  been  present  at  an  operation 
by  a  famous  surgeon.  It  is  evident  from  the  bear- 
ing of  patients,  nurses,  and  students  that  they 
are  dealing  with  a  less  highly  strung  population 
than  ours.  Indeed,  the  surgeons  who  know  both 
countries  tell  me  that  here  in  Germany  they 
have  more  endurance  of  this  phlegmatic  kind. 
They  suffer  more  like  animals.  Their  patience 
reaches  down  to  the  very  roots  of  their  being. 

On  that  delightful  big  fountain,  in  that  para- 
dise of  fountains,  Nuremberg,  the  statues  of  the 
electors  and  citizens  picture  men  who  were  un- 
troubled and  cheerful,  slow-moving,  contented, 
patient;  while  the  little  figures  on  the  guns  are 
positively  jolly.  The  only  mournful  figure  on 
the  whole  fountain  is  a  man  with  a  book  on  his 
knees  teaching  a  child.  He  is  pallid,  even  in 
bronze,  and  his  face  is  lined  as  he  muses  over  the 
problem  that  has  stumped  the  wisest  of  us :  how 
to  make  a  man  by  stuffing  a  child  with  books! 
It  cannot  be  done,  but  we  follow  this  will-o'-the- 


394     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

wisp  through  the  swamps  of  experience  with  the 
pitiable  enthusiasm  of  despair. 

Only  liberty  can  make  a  man,  and  she  is  such 
a  costly  mistress  that  with  our  increasing  hordes 
of  candidates  for  independence  we  cannot  afford 
her;  so  we  go  on  fooling  the  people  with  mechan- 
ical education.  But  even  this  figure  is  patient! 

The  Germans  are  patient  even  with  their 
food.  What  would  become  of  them  without  the 
goose,  the  pig,  the  calf,  and  the  duck,  that 
meagre  alimentary  quartette?  The  country  is 
white  with  home-raised  geese,  and  yet  they  im- 
ported 8,337,708  in  1910,  and  7,236,581  in  1911. 

One  of  their  most  charming  bits  of  classic  art 
is  the  famous  miniature  statue  of  the  Gooseman; 
and  the  real  name  of  the  great  Gutenberg,  who, 
by  his  invention  of  printing,  did  more  than  any 
other  mortal  to  make  it  easy  for  the  human  race 
to  acquire  the  anserine  mental  habits,  and  the 
anserine  moral  characteristics,  was  Gansfleisch! 

The  goose  is  really  the  national  bird  of  the 
German  people.  You  eat  tons  of  goose,  and 
then  you  sleep  beneath  the  feathers.  The  goose 
first  nourishes  you  and  then  protects  your  diges- 
tion. The  extraordinary  make-up  of  the  German 
bed  must  be  laid  to  the  door  of  the  guilty  goose. 
The  pillows  are  so  soft  that  your  head  is  ever 
sinking,  never  at  rest.  Instead  of  easily  applied 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  395 

blankets,  that  you  can  adapt  to  the  temperature, 
you  are  given  a  great  cloud  of  feathers,  sewn  in 
a  balloon-like  bag,  which  floats  upon  you  accord- 
ing to  your  degree  of  restlessness,  and  leaves  you 
for  the  floor,  when  in  stupid  sleepiness  you  en- 
deavor to  protect  your  whole  person  at  once 
with  its  flimsy  and  wanton  formlessness.  As  a 
rule  the  bed  is  built  up  at  the  head  so  that  you 
are  continually  sliding  down,  down  under  the 
goose  feathers,  your  nose  and  mouth  are  soon 
covered,  and  who  can  breathe  with  his  toes ! 

They  accumulate  comfort  very  slowly.  The 
wages  are  small  and  the  satisfactions  are  small. 
On  the  street-cars  the  conductor  is  grateful  for 
a  tip  of  five  pfennigs,  and  his  daily  customers 
are  handed  from  the  car-steps  and  respectfully 
saluted  in  return  for  this  tiny  douceur.  When 
you  dine  or  lunch  at  a  friend's  house  you  are  ex- 
pected to  leave  something  in  the  expectant  palm 
of  his  servant  who  sees  you  out. 

Women  carry  small  parcels  of  food  to  the 
theatre,  to  the  tea  and  beer  gardens,  and  thus 
save  the  small  additional  expense.  Many  a 
time  have  I  seen  these  thrifty  housewives  pocket 
the  sugar  and  the  zwiebacks  and  Brodchen  left 
over.  In  the  hotels,  soap,  paper,  and  common 
conveniences  of  the  kind  are  taken,  so  I  am  told, 
not,  I  maintain,  as  a  theft,  but  as  an  economy. 


396  GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  carrying  our  small  change 
loose  in  a  trousers  pocket,  but  the  German  al- 
most without  exception  carries  even  his  ten  and 
five  pfennig  pieces  carefully  in  a  purse.  Outside 
many  of  the  big  shops  is  placed  a  row  of  niches 
where  you  may  leave  your  unfinished  cigar  till 
you  return.  The  economy  thus  illustrated  shows 
a  certain  disregard,  of  a  not  altogether  agreeable 
chance  of  interchangeability,  that  might  even  be 
dangerous  to  health.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
a  wise  precaution  that  marks  beer-glasses  and 
beer- jugs  with  a  line,  to  show  just  how  much 
beer  you  are  entitled  to.  This  puts  the  foam- 
stealing  vendor  at  your  mercy. 

The  entertainments,  dinners,  luncheons,  teas, 
except  among  the  small  cosmopolitan  companies 
who  do  not  count  as  examples  of  German  man- 
ners and  customs,  are  very  prolonged  affairs. 
There  is  much  standing  about.  At  ten  o'clock, 
having  dined  at  half-past  seven,  beer,  tea,  coffee, 
sandwiches  are  brought  in,  and  you  begin  the 
gastronomies  over  again  on  a  smaller  scale. 
There  is  no  occasion  when  eating  and  drinking 
are  not  part  of  the  programme.  If  you  go  to 
the  play  or  the  opera  you  may  eat  and  drink 
there;  if  you  go  for  a  walk  the  goal  is  not  a  bath 
and  a  rub-down,  but  beer  or  chocolate  and  cakes. 

I  am  not  sure  that  there  i?  not  something  in 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  397 

the  theory  that  their  soil  has  less  iron  in  it,  being 
so  intensively  cultivated,  and  that  our  food  is 
consequently  stronger  than  theirs;  at  all  events, 
they  eat  more  frequently  and  more  copiously 
than  we  do.  It  seems  to  me  that  both  the  men 
and  the  women  show  it  in  their  faces  and  figures. 
They  are  a  heavy,  puffy,  tumbling  lot  after  forty; 
and  with  my  prepossessions  on  the  subject  I  am 
inclined  to  put  it  down  to  irregular  eating,  to  too 
much  eating  of  soft  and  sweet  food,  too  much 
drinking  of  fattening  beverages,  and  much,  much 
too  little  regular  exercise,  and  to  the  fact  that 
they  are  still  infants  in  the  matter  of  personal 
hygiene.  Dressing-gowns,  slippers,  proper  care 
of  the  teeth  and  hair,  regular  ablutions,  changing 
of  clothes,  all  these  dozens  of  helps  to  health  are 
patiently  neglected.  It  is  just  as  troublesome  to 
take  care  of  yourself,  to  groom  your  person,  to 
be  regular  in  your  habits,  and  restrained  and 
careful  in  your  diet  as  to  take  proper  care  of  a 
horse  or  a  dog.  It  shows  a  rather  high  grade  of 
persistent  prowess  in  a  man  just  to  keep  himself 
fit,  to  keep  himself  in  working  or  playing  health. 
Without  the  drilling  they  receive  in  the  army  in 
these  matters,  one  wonders  where  this  popula- 
tion would  be. 

The  doggedness,  the  patience  of  the  German 
is  notable,  but  the  alertness,  vivacity,  the  energy 


398     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

easily  on  .tap,  these  are  lacking  both  among  the 
men  and  the  women,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  for 
these  easily  apparent  reasons.  There  are  more 
rest-cures,  rheumatism,  heart,  liver,  kidney, 
anaemic  cures  in  Germany,  and  to  suit  all  purses, 
than  in  all  Anglo-Saxondom  combined,  even  if 
subject  territories  are  included.  In  Saxony 
alone,  which  is  not  renowned  for  its  cures,  the 
number  of  visitors  at  Augustus  Bad,  Bad  Elster, 
Hermanns  Bad,  Schandau,  and  some  seven  others 
has  increased  from  13,000  ten  years  ago  to 
30,000  in  1910. 

Between  1900  and  1909,  while  the  population 
of  Germany  increased  15  per  cent.,  the  days  of 
sickness  in  the  insurance  funds  increased  59  per 
cent,  and  the  expenditure  95  per  cent.  Some 
alterations  were  made  in  the  law  between  those 
years  permitting  a  certain  extension  of  the  days 
of  sickness,  but  an  accurate  percentage  may  be 
taken  between  the  years  1905  and  1909.  Dur- 
ing those  years  the  population  increased  by  7 
per  cent.,  the  days  of  sickness  by  17  per  cent., 
and  the  expenditure  out  of  the  sick-funds  by  32 
per  cent.  The  total  cost  of  sickness  insurance 
in  1900  was  $42,895,000  and  in  1909  $83,640,000. 
What  will  happen  in  Great  Britain  when  sickness 
insurance  comes  into  thorough  working  order  is 
worthy  of  caricature.  The  way  my  Irish  friends 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  399 

will  play  that  game  fills  me  with  joy.  It  is  an 
abominable  harness  to  put  on  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
and  he  has  my  very  best  wishes  if  he  refuses  to 
wear  it  tamely.  It  is  only  another  piece  of  tired 
legislation  that  solves  nothing.  Even  Germany 
would  be  a  thousand  times  better  off  without  it. 
This  attempting  to  make  pills  and  powders  take 
the  place  of  love  one  another,  is  merely  the 
politician  sneaking  away  from  his  problem.  Of 
course,  it  is  impossible  to  tell  how  many  people 
are  sick  by  being  paid  for  it,  probably  not  a  small 
number.  We  all  have  mornings  when  we  would 
turn  over  and  stick  to  our  pillows  if  we  were  sure 
of  payment  for  doing  so.  The  German  appar- 
ently is  the  only  person  in  the  world  who  is  happy, 
cegrescit  medendo.  The  Germans  keep  going,  we 
must  all  admit  that,  but  at  a  slower  pace,  with 
less  energy  to  spare,  and  with  far  less  robust  love 
of  life. 

If  the  men  are  patient,  the  women  must  be 
more  so,  and  they  are.  The  marriage  service 
still  reads:  "He  shall  be  your  ruler,  and  you 
shall  be  his  vassal."  The  women  are  not  only 
patient  with  all  that  requires  patience  of  the 
men,  but  they  are  patient  with  the  men  besides, 
a  heavy  additional  burden  from  the  American 
point  of  view.  Beethoven  writes:  "Resigna- 
tion! Welch'  elendes  Hulfsmittel!  Und  doch 


400    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

bleibt  es  mir  das  einzige  ubrige."  They  take 
resignation  for  granted  as  we  never  do. 

Some  ten  years  ago  only,  was  formed  the 
Women's  Suffrage  League  in  Germany.  It  was 
necessary  to  organize  in  the  free  city  of  Hamburg, 
because  women  were  not  allowed  either  to  form 
or  to  join  political  unions  in  Prussia !  It  is  only 
within  a  very  few  years  that  the  girls'  higher 
schools  have  been  increased  and  cared  for  in  due 
proportion  to  the  schools  provided  for  the  higher 
education  of  the  boys.  The  first  girls'  rowing 
club  was  organized  at  Cassel  in  1911.  Even  now 
as  I  write  there  are  protests  and  petitions  from 
the  male  masters  against  women  teachers  in  the 
higher  positions  of  even  these  schools.  In  the 
discussions  as  to  the  proper  subjects  to  be  taught 
to  the  girls,  who  in  1912  began  attending  the 
newly  constituted  continuation  schools  for  girls 
in  Berlin,  there  is  a  strong  party  who  argue  that 
all  of  them  should  be  taught  only  house-keeping 
and  the  duties  pertaining  thereto.  To  the  great 
majority  of  German  men,  children  and  the 
kitchen  are  and  ought  to  be  the  sole  preoccupa- 
tions of  women,  with  occasional  church  attend- 
ance thrown  in. 

There  have  been  enormous  changes  in  the 
place  women  hold  in  the  German  world  in  the 
last  thirty  years.  The  Red  Cross  organization 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  401 

of  the  women  throughout  Germany  is  admirable 
and  as  complete  and  efficient  as  the  army  that  it 
is  intended  to  help;  one  can  hardly  say  more. 
There  are  many  private  charities  in  Berlin  and 
other  cities,  managed  entirely  by  women,  and 
doing  excellent  and  sensible  work;  such  as  the 
kindergartens,  the  Pestalozzi-Froebelhaus  for  ex- 
ample, where  four  hundred  children  are  taken 
care  of  daily  and  fifteen  thousand  ten-pfennig 
meals  provided,  besides  classes  for  the  young 
women  students  under  the  supervision  of  the 
Berliner  Verein  fur  Volkserziehung,  with  courses 
in  the  elements  of  law  and  politics  and  other 
matters  likely  to  concern  them  in  their  activities 
as  teachers,  nurses,  or  charity  helpers;  the  in- 
valid-kitchens; the  societies  for  looking  after 
young  girls ;  the  work  in  the  Temperance  League ; 
the  Lette-Verein,  one  of  the  most  sane  and  sen- 
sible institutions  in  the  world  for  the  training  of 
girls  and  young  women,  where  they  turn  out 
some  two  thousand  girls  a  year  trained  in  house- 
wifely economy ;  the  wonderful  and  pitiful  colony 
at  Bielefeld,  founded  by  one  of  Germany's  great- 
est organizers  and  saints,  Pastor  Bodelschwing, 
and  now  carried  on  by  his  equally  able  son,  and 
aided  largely  by  the  sympathy  and  resources  of 
women.  Only  another  Saint  Francis  could  have 
imagined,  and  produced,  and  loved  into  useful- 
ness such  an  institution. 


402    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

The  summer  colonies,  called  gartenlauben  col- 
onies, where  the  outlying  and  unused  land  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  cities  is  divided  up  into  small 
parcels  and  rented  for  a  nominal  sum  to  the 
poorer  working  people  of  the  city,  constitute  a 
most  sensible  form  of  philanthropy.  You  see 
them,  each  named  by  its  proprietor,  with  a  flag 
flying,  with  the  light  barriers  dividing  them,  and 
with  the  small  huts  erected  as  a  shelter,  where 
flowers  and  fruits  and  vegetables  are  grown, 
often  adding  no  small  amount  to  income,  and 
in  every  case  offering  the  soundest  kind  of  work 
and  recreation.  These  colonies  were  started  by 
a  woman  in  France,  and  the  idea  worked  its 
way  through  Belgium  to  Germany,  and  they  are 
now  supported  and  helped  by  the  direct  inter- 
est of  the  Empress.  The  woman  who  put  this 
scheme  into  operation  ought  to  have  a  monu- 
ment !  At  Charlottenburg,  a  suburb  of  Berlin,  on 
a  plot  lent  by  the  city,  there  are  thirteen  of  these 
colonies  divided  into  over  a  thousand  plots. 

There  are  three-quarters  of  a  million  women 
in  Germany  who  are  independent  owners  and 
heads  of  establishments  of  different  kinds,  and 
some  ten  million  who  are  bread-winners.  Of  the 
increase  in  the  number  of  women  students  I  have 
written  in  another  chapter,  and  of  their  increas- 
ing participation  in  the  political,  economical, 
literary,  and  scholarly  life  of  the  nation  there 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  403 

are  many  examples.  Once  or  twice  I  have  even 
heard  them  speak  in  public,  and  speak  well, 
while  if  my  memory  serves  me,  this  was  prac- 
tically unknown  in  my  university  days  here. 
The  problem  of  domestic  apprenticeship  is  also 
being  wrorked  out  by  the  women  of  Germany. 
In  Munich,  in  Frankfurt-am-Main  and  elsewhere 
this  most  difficult  and  delicate  question  is  being 
partially  answered  at  least.  Girls  are  appren- 
ticed to  families  needing  them,  under  the  super- 
vision of  a  committee  of  women.  The  girls  and 
their  families  agree  to  certain  terms,  and  the 
families  agree  also  to  teach  them  household 
duties,  give  them  proper  food,  eight  hours'  sleep, 
their  Sunday  out,  and  so  on.  The  German 
women's  societies  who  have  thus  boldly  tackled 
this  problem  are  plucky  indeed,  and  prove  easily 
enough  that  there  is  a  large  and  growing  body 
of  women  in  Germany,  who  have  minds  and  wills 
of  their  own  and  great  executive  ability. 

Let  me  suggest  to  some  of  our  idle  women  that 
they  pay  a  visit  to  the  Hausf  rauenbund  at  Frank- 
fort and  the  Frauenverein-Arbeiterinnenheim 
at  Munich,  before  they  pass  judgment  upon  this 
chapter.  For  I  should  be  sorry  to  leave  the  im- 
pression that  all  the  women  of  Germany  are  list- 
less, oppressed,  and  without  any  feeling  of  civic 
responsibility. 

All  these  things  have  been  accomplished  by 


404     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

women  in  Germany  with  far  less  sympathy  from 
the  men  than  they  receive  in  America  or  in  Eng- 
land. Cato  wrote  of  women's  suffrage:  "Pray 
what  will  they  not  assail,  if  they  carry  their 
point?  Call  to  mind  all  the  principles  govern- 
ing them  by  which  your  ancestors  have  held  the 
presumption  of  women  in  check,  and  made  them 
subject  to  their  husbands.  ...  As  soon  as  they 
have  begun  to  be  your  equals  they  will  be  your 
superiors."  It  is  an  older  story  than  the  un- 
read realize,  this  of  the  rights  of  women.  The 
bulk  of  Germany's  male  population  still  hold  to 
Cato's  view.  It  is  not  so  much  that  they  are 
antagonistic,  except  in  the  case  of  the  teachers, 
where  the  women  have  become  active  compet- 
itors; they  are  in  their  patient  way  impervious. 
Nor  can  it  be  said  that  any  very  large  number  of 
the  women  themselves  are  eager  for  more  rights; 
rather  are  they  becoming  restless  because  they 
receive  so  little  consideration. 

Their  pleasures  are  simple  and  restricted,  reg- 
ular attendance  at  the  theatre,  at  concerts,  an 
occasional  dinner  at  a  restaurant  to  celebrate  an 
anniversary,  excursions  with  the  whole  family 
to  a  beer  restaurant  of  a  Sunday,  and  the  endless 
meeting  together  for  reading,  sewing,  and  gossip 
-  no  German  woman  apparently  but  what  be- 
longs to  a  verein  or  circle,  meeting,  say,  once  a 
week. 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  405 


The  women  and  the  men  are  gregarious. 
soli  is  the  motto  of  the  race.  They  love  to  take 
their  pleasures  in  crowds,  and  I  am  not  sure  that 
this  does  not  dull  the  enthusiasm  for  personal 
rights  and  gratifications,  and  for  individual  su- 
premacy and  dignity.  It  is  rare  to  find  a  Ger- 
man who  would  subscribe  to  Andrew  Marvell's 
misogynist  lines: 

"Two  paradises  are  in  one 
To  live  in  Paradise  alone." 

It  is  typical  of  this  love  of  being  together  that 
an  independent  member  of  the  Reichstag,  owing 
allegiance  to  no  party,  is  called  a  Wilde,  and  this 
same  word  Wilde,  or  wild  man,  is  applied  to  the 
student  at  the  university  who  belongs  to  no 
corps  or  association  of  students.  This  love  of 
being  together,  of  touching  elbows  on  all  occa- 
sions, makes  them  more  easily  led  and  ruled. 
They  hate  the  isolation  necessary  for  indepen- 
dence and  revolt. 

Of  the  relations  between  men  and  women  I 
long  ago  came  to  the  conclusion  that  this  is  a 
subject  best  left  to  the  scientific  explorer.  It  is, 
however,  open  to  the  casual  observer  to  comment 
upon  the  monstrous  percentage  of  illegitimacy 
in  Berlin,  20  per  cent,  or  one  child  out  of 
every  five,  born  out  of  wedlock;  14  per  cent. 
in  Bavaria;  and  10  per  cent,  for  the  whole  em- 


406     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

pire.  This  alone  tells  a  sad  tale  of  the  atti- 
tude of  the  men  and  women  toward  one  another. 
There  is  a  long  journey  ahead  of  the  women  who 
propose  to  lift  their  sisters  on  to  a  plane  above 
the  animals  in  this  respect.  In  the  matter  of 
divorce  Prussia  comes  fourth  in  the  list  of  Euro- 
pean nations.  Norway,  with  the  cheapest  and 
easiest,  and  at  the  same  time  the  wisest,  divorce 
law  in  the  world,  has  almost  the  lowest  percent- 
age of  divorce.  In  1910  there  wrere  390  divorces 
out  of  400,000  existing  marriages,  of  which 
14,600  had  taken  place  that  year.  The  per- 
centage is  thus  only  about  2^  per  year.  The 
total  per  100,000  of  the  population  in  Switzer- 
land is  43;  in  France  33;  in  Denmark  27;  and 
in  Prussia  21.  In  industrial  Saxony  there  are  32 
and  in  Catholic  Bavaria  13.  The  number  of 
married  people  in  Germany  according  to  the 
last  census  shows  an  increase,  the  number  of 
bachelors  and  widowed  persons  a  decrease. 
Since  1871  the  number  of  married  persons 
has  increased  by  2  per  cent.  The  birth  rate 
shows  a  proportional  decline.  The  problem  that 
bothers  all  social  economists  is  to  the  fore  in 
Germany  as  elsewhere,  for  the  people  between 
sixty  and  seventy  years  of  age  number  14.65  per 
cent,  of  the  population,  while  the  young  people 
under  ten  number  only  11.12,  and  those  between 
twenty  and  thirty  10.93  per  cent.  The  birth 


THE   DISTAFF  SIDE  407 

rate  therefore  shows  the  same  tendency  as  in 
France,  England,  and  America.  A  recent  in- 
vestigation on  a  small  scale  seems  to  show  that 
bureaucracy  has  a  certain  influence  here.  Of 
300  officials  questioned,  only  10,  or  3^  per  thou- 
sand, had  more  than  two  children.  It  is  not  an 
impossible,  but  certainly  a  laughable,  outcome 
of  state  interference  carried  too  far,  should  it 
result  in  the  state's  becoming  an  incubator  for 
the  unfit,  in  a  country  where  the  pensions  for 
officers  and  employees  of  the  state  have  risen 
from  50,000,000  marks  in  1900  to  111,000,000 
marks  in  1911. 

Even  in  higher  circles  in  Germany  there  is  a 
gushing  idealism  about  the  relations  of  the  sexes. 
In  their  songs  and  sayings,  as  well  as  in  their 
mythology,  there  is  a  laudation  of  love  that  is 
overstimulating.  The  lines  of  that  inconsequen- 
tial philosopher,  that  irresponsible  moralist,  that 
dreamy  Puritan,  Emerson, 

"Give  all  to  love; 
Obey  thy  heart; 
Friends,  kindred,  days, 
Estate,  good  fame, 
Plans,  credit  and  the  Muse — 
Nothing  refuse" 

would  be  warmly  praised  in  Germany. 


408     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much 
Loved  I  not  honour  more" 


are  lines  more  to  our  taste.  Even  love  should 
have  a  deal  of  toughness  of  fibre  in  it  to  be 
worth  much. 

I  must  leave  it  to  my  readers  to  guess  what  I 
think  of  the  German  woman;  indeed,  it  is  of 
little  consequence  what  any  individual  opinion 
is,  if  matter  is  given  for  the  formation  of  an 
opinion  by  others.  Truth  cannot  afford  to  be 
either  gallant  or  merciless.  There  are  women 
in  Germany  whom  no  man  can  know  without 
respect,  without  admiration,  without  affection. 
There  are  the  blue  eyes,  sunny  hair,  peach-bloom 
complexions  of  the  north;  there  are  the  dark- 
eyed,  black-haired,  heavy -browed  women  of  the 
Black  Forest;  there  is  often  a  Quakerish  elegance 
of  figure  and  apparel  to  be  seen  on  the  streets  of 
the  cities,  and  from  time  to  time  one  sees  a  real 
Germania,  big  of  frame,  bold  of  brow,  fearless  of 
glance  —  patet  deal 

But  we  can  none  of  us  be  quite  sure  of  the 
impartiality  of  our  taste  in  such  matters.  Our 
baby  fingers  and  our  baby  lips  were  taught  to 
love  a  certain  type  of  beauty.  Our  mothers 
wove  a  web  of  admiration  and  devotion  from 
which  no  real  man  ever  escapes;  our  maturer 


THE   DISTAFF   SIDE  409 

passions  lashed  themselves  to  an  image  from 
which  we  can  never  wholly  break  away;  our 
sins  and  sorrows  and  adventures  have  been 
drenched  in  the  tears  of  eyes  that  are  like  no 
other  eyes;  and  consequently  the  man  who 
could  pretend  to  cold  neutrality  would  be  a 
reprobate. 

The  German  looks  to  Germany,  the  English- 
man to  England,  the  Frenchman  to  France,  as 
do  you  and  I  to  America,  for 

'The  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships 
And  burnt  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium." 


VIII 


OF  every  one  hundred  inhabitants  of  Ger- 
many, including  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren,   one    is    a    soldier.      There    are, 
roughly,    65,000,000    inhabitants    and    650,000 
soldiers. 

The  American  army  is  about  equal  in  num- 
bers to  the  corps  of  officers  of  Germany's  army 
and  navy.  To  the  American,  as  to  almost  every 
other  foreigner,  the  German  army  means  only 
one  thing:  war.  We  all  hear  one  thing: 

"And  'mid  this  tumult  Kubla  heard  from  far 
Ancestral  voices  prophesying  war." 

I  believe  this  is  a  half-truth,  and  dangerous  ac- 
cordingly. This  army  has  been  in  existence  for 
over  forty  years,  and  has  done  far  more  to  keep 
the  peace  than  any  other  one  factor  in  Europe, 
except,  perhaps,  the  British  navy. 

The  German  army  protects  the  German  peo- 
ple not  only  from  external  foes,  but  from  internal 
diseases.  It  is  the  greatest  school  of  hygiene  in 
the  world,  on  account  of  its  sound  teaching,  the 

410 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  411 

devotion,  skill,  and  industry  of  its  officers,  the 
number  of  its  pupils,  and  its  widely  distributed 
lessons  and  influence. 

Culture  taken  by  itself  is  livery  business,  and 
when  combined  with  much  beer  and  wine  drink- 
ing, irregular  eating  and  a  disinclination  for  reg- 
ular exercise,  culture  becomes  a  positive  menace 
to  health.  Of  this  danger  to  the  German,  their 
own  great  man  Bismarck  spoke  in  the  Abgeord- 
netenhaus  in  1881:  "Bei  uns  Deutschen  wird 
mit  wenigem  so  viel  Zeit  totgeschlagen  wie  mit 
Biertrinken.  Wer  beim  Friihschoppen  sitzt  oder 
beim  Abendschoppen  und  gar  noch  dazu  raucht 
und  Zeitungen  liest,  halt  sich  voll  ausreichend 
beschaftigt  und  geht  mit  gutem  Gewissen  nach 
Haus  in  dem  Bewusstsein,  das  Seinige  geleistet 
zu  haben." 

("The  Germans  waste  more  time  drinking  beer 
than  in  any  other  way.  The  man  who  sits  with 
his  morning  or  his  afternoon  glass  of  beer  beside 
him,  and  who,  in  addition,  smokes  and  reads  the 
newspapers,  considers  that  he  is  much  occupied, 
and  goes  home  with  a  good  conscience,  feeling 
that  he  has  fully  done  his  duty.") 

"Jeden  Feind  besiegt  der  Deutsche. 
Nur  den  Durst  besiegt  er  nicht." 

Which  I  permit  myself  to  translate  into  these 
two  lines: 


412     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"The  German  conquers  every  foe, 
Except  his  thirst,  that  lays  him  low." 

Even  if  the  German  army  were  not  necessary 
as  a  policeman,  it  could  not  be  spared  as  a  phy- 
sician by  the  German  people.  It  is  to  be  for- 
ever kept  in  mind  that  the  German  is  brought 
up  on  rules;  the  American  and  the  Englishman 
on  emergencies.  Emergencies  provide  a  certain 
discipline  of  themselves,  and  our  philosophy  of 
civilization  leaves  it  to  the  individual  to  get  his 
own  discipline  from  his  own  emergencies.  We 
call  it  the  formation  of  character.  The  German 
thinks  this  method  a  hap-hazard  method,  and 
burdens  men  with  rules,  and  the  army  is  Ger- 
many's greatest  school-master  along  those  lines. 
We  are  inclined  to  think  that  it  results  in  a 
machine-made  citizen. 

There  are  three  classes  of  men  who  pick  up  the 
bill  of  fare  of  life  and  look  it  over:  Civilization's 
paralyzed  ones,  with  no  appetite,  who  can  choose 
what  they  will  without  regard  to  the  prices;  the 
cautious,  those  with  appetite  but  who  are  ham- 
pered in  their  choice  by  the  prices;  the  bold, 
those  with  appetite  and  audacity,  who  rely  upon 
their  courage  to  satisfy  the  landlord.  The  Ger- 
mans are  only  just  beginning  to  look  over  the 
world's  bill  of  fare  in  this  last  lordly  fashion, 
to  which  some  of  us  have  long  been  accustomed. 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  413 

I  see  no  reason  why  they  should  not  do  so, 
though  I  see  clearly  enough  the  suspicion  and 
jealousy  it  creates. 

They  have  been  swathed  in  "Forbidden"  so 
long  that  their  taste  for  daring  was  late  in  com- 
ing. Our  colonies,  small  wars,  punitive  expedi- 
tions, and  control  over  neighboring  territories 
are  not  planned  for  far  ahead ;  but  the  exigencies 
of  the  situations  are  met  by  the  remedies  and  so- 
lutions of  men  fitted  by  their  training  in  school, 
in  sport,  in  social  and  political  life  for  just  such 
work,  and  who  are  the  more  efficient  the  more 
they  do  of  it.  We  are  inclined  to  do  things,  and 
to  think  them  out  the  day  after;  while  the  Ger- 
man thinks  them  out  the  week  before,  and  then 
sometimes  hesitates  to  do  them  at  all. 

The  German  goes  more  slowly,  perhaps  more 
successfully,  in  commercial  and  industrial  under- 
takings, but  always  with  a  chart  in  front  of  him, 
a  pair  of  spectacles  on  his  nose,  and  with  no  de- 
sire to  take  chances. 

In  the  rough-and-tumble  world,  the  American 
and  the  Englishman  went  ahead  the  faster;  in  a 
more  orderly  world,  and  commerce,  industry, 
and  war  are  all  far  more  scientific  or  orderly  than 
of  yore,  the  German  has  come  into  his  own  and 
goes  ahead  very  fast.  He  has  not  made  friends 
and  supporters  as  have  the  other  two:  first,  be- 
cause he  is  a  new-comer;  and  also,  I  believe, 


414     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

because  human  nature,  even  when  it  is  not  ad- 
venturous itself,  loves  adventure,  and  has  a  lik- 
ing for  the  man  who  is  a  law  unto  himself.  In- 
deed, the  Germans  themselves  have  a  sneaking 
fondness  for  such  a  one.  At  any  rate  there  is 
far  more  imitation  of  American  and  English  ways 
in  Germany,  than  of  German  manners,  customs, 
and  methods  in  America  or  in  England. 

"Experiment  is  not  sufficient,"  writes  The- 
ophrastus  von  Hohenheim,  called  Paracelsus; 
"experience  must  verify  what  can  be  accepted  or 
not  accepted;  knowledge  is  experience."  For 
the  moment,  but  it  is  probably  not  for  long,  we 
have  the  advantage  in  the  knowledge  bred  of 
experience. 

The  German  comes  from  the  forest,  loves  the 
forest.  "  Kein  Volk  ist  so  innig  mit  seinem  Wald 
erwachsen  wie  das  Deutsche,  keines  liebt  den 
Wald  so  sehr."  ("No  nation  has  grown  up  so 
at  one  with  its  forests  as  have  the  Germans;  no 
other  nation  loves  its  forests  as  do  they.")  He 
walks,  and  meditates,  and  sings  in  the  forest,  and 
nowadays  goes  to  the  forest  with  his  skis,  his 
snow-shoes,  and  his  sled.  Our  great  games  are, 
many  of  them,  personal  conflicts,  and  attended 
by  some  personal  risk,  and  demanding  both  dis- 
cipline in  preparing  for  them  and  severe  disci- 
pline in  the  playing.  Our  love  of  the  aleatory,  of 
betting  our  belongings,  our  powers,  our  per- 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  415 

sons  even,  against  life,  is  not  commonly  alive  in 
Germany.  The  Germans  are  only  just  emerging 
into  safety  and  confidence  in  themselves,  and 
beginning  cautiously  to  agree  with  us  that 

"He  either  fears  his  fate  too  much, 

Or  his  deserts  are  small, 
That  dares  not  put  it  to  the  touch 
To  gain  or  lose  it  all." 

From  these  sombre  forests  came  a  race  who  still 
find  it  lonely  to  be  alone,  and  they  herd  to- 
gether still  for  safety  as  of  old,  and  have  no 
love  of  physical  speculation.  They  are  daring 
in  thought  and  theory,  but  cautious  in  physical 
and  personal  matters.  An  office  stool  followed 
by^  a  pension  contents  all  too  many  men  in 
Germany. 

"Reden,  Handeln,  Tun  und  Wandeln 
Zeigt  der  Menschen  Wesen  nicht. 
Was  im  Herzen  sie  im  Stillen 
Fest  verschliessen,  stumm  verhiillen, 
1st  ihr  richtigs  Angesicht." 

An  overwhelming  majority  of  Germans  believe 
that  this  is  man's  real  portrait;  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  Americans  would  not  even  un- 
derstand it. 

The  German  army  is  the  antidote  to  this  lack 
of  physical  discipline,  this  lack  of  strenuous  phys- 
ical life.  The  army  takes  the  place  of  our  West, 
of  our  games,  of  our  sports;  just  as  it  takes  the 


416     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

place  of  England's  colonies  and  public  schools 
and  games  and  sports.  When  looked  at  in  this 
way,  when  its  double  duty  is  recognized,  the 
enormous  cost  of  it  is  not  so  material.  The  ex- 
pense of  the  German  army  is  not  greater  than 
our  armies,  plus  what  we  spend  for  games  and 
sport  and  colonial  adventure. 

Germany  has  4,570  miles  of  frontier  to  guard, 
to  begin  with,  and  her  total  area  is  208,780  square 
miles,  or  an  area  one  fourth  less  than  that  of  our 
State  of  Texas,  with  a  population  per  square 
mile  of  310.4.  Of  this  population  1,000,000, 
roughly,  are  subjects  of  foreign  powers.  Five 
hundred  thousand  are  from  Austria-Hungary, 
100,000  each  from  Finland  and  Russia,  nearly 
100,000  from  Italy,  some  17,000  Americans,  and 
so  on.  In  1900  the  population  speaking  German 
numbered  51,000,000. 

This  compact  little  country  is  the  very  heart 
of  Europe,  surrounded  by  Russia,  Austria-Hun- 
gary, Italy,  Switzerland,  France,  Belgium,  Hol- 
land, Denmark,  and,  across  the  North  Sea, 
England.  In  the  case  of  trouble  in  Europe,  Ger- 
many is  the  centre.  Nothing  can  happen  that 
does  not  concern  her,  that  must  not  indeed  con- 
cern her  vitally.  She  has  fought  at  one  time  or 
another  in  the  last  hundred  years  with  Russia, 
Austria-Hungary,  Italy,  Switzerland,  France, 
Belgium,  Holland,  Denmark,  and  England,  and 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  417 

the  various  German  states  among  themselves ;  or 
her  soldiers  have  fought  against  their  soldiers, 
whether  or  not  the  various  countries  named  were 
geographically  and  politically  then  what  they 
are  now. 

Russia's  population  in  1910  was  160,748,000, 
and  including  the  Finnish  provinces,  163,778,800. 
Since  1897  the  population  of  Russia  has  increased 
at  the  annual  rate  of  2,732,000.  The  boundaries 
between  Russia  and  Germany  are  mere  sand 
dunes,  and  by  rail  the  Russian  outposts  are  only 
a  few  hours  from  Berlin.  France  is  only  across 
the  Rhine,  and  it  is  no  secret  that  some  months 
ago  Great  Britain  had  worked  out  a  plan  by 
which  she  could  put  150,000  troops  on  the  fron- 
tiers of  Germany,  at  the  service  of  France,  in 
thirteen  days.  Germany's  ocean  commerce  must 
pass  through  the  Straits  of  Dover,  down  the 
English  Channel,  within  striking  distance  of 
Plymouth,  Portsmouth,  Dover,  Brest,  and  Cher- 
bourg. France,  which  has  been  looked  upon  as 
a  somewhat  negligible  quantity,  has  taken  on  a 
new  lease  of  life.  When  Napoleon  died,  in  1821, 
he  left  France  swept  clean  of  her  fighting  men, 
whose  bones  were  bleaching  all  the  way  from 
Madrid  to  Moscow.  France  has  recuperated 
and  is  almost  another  nation  to-day  from  the 
stand-point  of  virility.  She  far  surpasses  Ger- 
many in  literature,  art,  and  science,  and  is  tak- 


418    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing  her  old  place  in  the  world.  She  led  the  way 
in  motor  construction,  in  field-artillery,  in  avia- 
tion, and  now  she  is  producing  a  champion  mid- 
dle-weight sparrer,  and,  marvel  of  marvels,  has 
actually  beaten  Scotland  at  foot-ball!  She  has 
always  had  brains,  and  now  her  stability  and  vi- 
rility are  reviving.  This  has  not  passed  unno- 
ticed in  Germany.  No  wonder  Germany  looks 
upon  her  navy  as  something  more  than  a  Win- 
stonchurchillian  luxury ! 

One  may  understand  at  once  from  this  situa- 
tion, and  from  her  past  history,  that  Germany 
has  the  sound  good  sense  not  to  be  influenced  by 
the  latest  school  of  sentimentalists,  who  pretend 
to  believe  that  the  world  is  a  polyglot  Sunday- 
school,  with  converted  millionaires  as  teachers 
therein;  or,  if  not  that,  a  counting-house,  where 
all  questions  of  honor,  race,  religion,  love,  pride, 
all  the  questions  which  bubble  their  answers  in 
our  blood,  are  to  be  settled  by  weighing  their 
comparative  cost  in  dollars.  We  do  not  realize 
how  new  is  this  word  sentimental.  John  Wesley, 
writing  of  this  word  "  sentimental "  as  used  in 
Sterne's  "  Sentimental  Journey,"  says:  "  Senti- 
mental, what  is  that?  It  is  not  English,  it  is 
not  sense,  it  conveys  no  determinate  idea.  Yet 
one  fool  makes  many,  and  this  nonsensical  word 
(who  would  believe  it)  is  become  a  fashionable 
one." 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  419 

Germany  has  been  taught  by  bitter  experi- 
ences, and  harsh  masters,  that  the  ultimate 
power  to  command  must  rest  with  that  authority 
which,  if  necessary,  can  compel  people  to  obey. 
They  recognize,  too,  the  mawkish  mental  foolery 
of  any  plan  of  living  together  which  ignores  the 
part  which  physical  force  must  necessarily  play 
in  any  political  or  social  life  which  is  complete. 
They  agree,  too,  as  does  every  intelligent  man  in 
Christendom,  that  the  appeal  to  reason  is  far 
preferable  to  an  appeal  to  war.  But,  pray,  what 
is  to  be  done  where  there  is  no  reason  to  appeal 
to?  Are  reasonable  men  to  strip  themselves  of 
all  armor,  and  suffer  unreason  to  prevail? 

An  army  or  a  fleet  is  no  more  an  incitement  to 
war  among  reasonable  men,  than  a  policeman  is 
an  incentive  to  burglary  or  homicide.  An  army 
is  not  a  contemptuous  protest  against  Christian- 
ity; it  is  a  sad  commentary  on  Christianity's 
failure  and  inefficiency.  An  army  and  a  fleet  are 
merely  a  reasonable  precaution  which  every 
nation  must  take,  while  awaiting  the  conversion 
of  mankind  from  the  predatory  to  the  polite. 

As  yet  the  Germans  have  not  been  overtaken 
by  the  tepid  wave  of  feminism,  which  for  the 
moment  is  bathing  the  prosperity-softened  cult- 
ure of  America  and  England.  It  is  a  harsh 
remedy,  but  both  America  and  England  woulfl 
gain  something  of  virility  if  they  were  shot  over 


420     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

We  are  all  apt  enough  to  become  womanish,  agi- 
tated, or  acidulous,  according  to  age  and  condi- 
tion, when  we  are  reaping  in  security  the  fields 
cleared,  enriched,  and  planted  by  a  hardy  an- 
cestry of  pioneers.  There  were  no  self-conscious 
peace-makers;  no  worshippers  of  those  two  epi- 
cene idols:  a  God  too  much  man,  and  a  man 
too  much  God;  no  devotees  of  third-sexism,  in 
the  days  of  Waterloo  and  Gettysburg,  when  we 
had  men's  tasks  to  occupy  us. 

We  are  playing  with  our  dolls  just  now,  driving 
our  coaches  over  the  roads,  sailing  our  yachts  in 
the  waters,  eating  the  fruits  of  the  fields  that 
have  been  won  for  us  by  the  sweat  and  blood  of 
those  gone  before.  Germany  has  no  leisure  for 
that,  no  doll's  house  as  yet  to  play  in,  and  she  is 
perhaps  more  fortunate  than  she  knows. 

One  can  understand,  too,  that  Germany  has 
little  patience  with  the  confused  thinking  which 
maintains  that  military  training  only  makes  sol- 
diers and  only  incites  to  martial  ambitions ;  when, 
on  the  contrary,  she  sees  every  day  that  it  makes 
youths  better  and  stronger  citizens,  and  produces 
that  self-respect,  self-control,  and  cosmopolitan 
sympathy  which  more  than  aught  else  lessen  the 
chances  of  conflict. 

(. I  can  vouch  for  it  that  there  are  fewer  personal 
jealousies,  bickerings,  quarrels  in  the  mess-room 
or  below  decks  of  a  war-ship,  or  in  a  soldiers' 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  421 

camp  or  barracks,  than  in  many  church  and 
Sunday-school  assemblies,  in  many  club  smok- 
ing-rooms, in  many  ladies'  sewing  or  reading 
circles.j  Nothing  does  away  more  surely  with 
quarrelsomeness  than  the  training  of  men  to  get 
on  together  comfortably,  each  giving  way  a 
little  in  the  narrow  lanes  of  life,  so  that  each 
may  pass  without  moral  shoving.  There  are  no 
such  successful  schools  for  the  teaching  of  this 
fundamental  diplomacy  as  the  sister  services,  the 
army  and  the  navy. 

My  latest  visit  to  Germany  has  converted  me 
completely  to  the  wisdom  of  compulsory  service. 
Nor  am  I  merely  an  academic  disciple.  I  have 
had  a  course  in  it  myself,  and  were  it  possible 
in  America  I  should  give  any  boy  of  mine  the 
benefit  of  the  same  training.  In  Germany,  at  any 
rate,  no  student  of  the  situation  there  would  deny 
that,  barring  Bismarck,  the  army  has  done  more 
for  the  nation  than  any  other  one  factor  that  can 
be  named.  Soldiers  and  sailors  train  themselves, 
and  train  others,  first  of  all  to  self-control,  not 
to  war.  It  is  a  pity  that  "compulsory  service" 
has  come  to  mean  merely  training  to  fight.  In 
Germany,  at  any  rate,  it  means  far  more  than 
that.  Two  generations  of  Germans  have  been 
taught  to  take  care  of  themselves  physically 
without  drawing  a  sword. 

It  is  rather  a  puzzling  commentary  upon  the 


422     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

growth  of  democracy,  that  in  America  and  in 
England,  where  most  has  been  conceded  to  the 
majority,  there  is  least  inclination  on  their  part  to 
accept  the  necessary  personal  burden  of  keeping 
themselves  fit,  not  necessarily  for  war,  but  for 
peace,  by  accepting  universal  and  compulsory 
training.  The  only  fair  law  would  be  one  de- 
manding that  no  one  should  be  admitted  to  look 
on  at  a  game  of  cricket,  foot-ball,  or  base-ball 
who  could  not  pass  a  mild  examination  in  these 
games,  or  give  proof  of  an  equivalent  training. 
That  would  be  honorable  democracy  in  the  realm 
of  sport. 

There  formerly  existed  in  Bavaria  a  supple- 
mentary tax  on  estates  left  by  persons  who  had 
not  served  in  the  active  army.  It  was  done  away 
with  at  the  formation  of  the  empire.  There  is  a 
proposal  now  to  vote  such  an  additional  tax  for 
all  Germany,  and  a  very  fair  tax  it  would  be. 

I  am  not  discussing  here  the  question  of  com- 
pulsory service  in  England.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
see  that  part  of  England's  army  must  of  neces- 
sity be  a  professional  army,  which  can  be  sent 
here  and  there  and  everywhere,  and  that  con- 
scription would  not  answer  the  purpose,  for  com- 
pulsory conscription  could  hardly  demand  of  its 
recruits  that  they  should  serve  in  India,  in  Can- 
ada, or  in  Bermuda  or  Egypt,  for  the  length  of 
time  necessary  to  make  their  service  of  value. 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  423 

Conscription,  too,  on  a  scale  to  make  an  army 
serviceable  against  the  trained  troops  of  the 
Continent  is  out  of  the  question.  Therefore,  so 
far  as  compulsory  service  for  military  duty  only 
is  concerned,  I  see  no  hope  for  it  in  England. 
But  in  a  land  of  free  men  such  as  is,  or  used  to 
be,  England,  and  in  America,  compulsory  ser- 
vice ought  to  be  undertaken  with  pride  and  with 
pleasure,  as  a  moral,  not  as  a  military,  duty  for 
the  salvation  of  the  country  from  internal  foes, 
and  as  a  nucleus  around  which  could  rally  the 
nation  as  a  whole  in  case  of  attack  from  external 
foes.  Patriotism  among  us  has  come  to  a  pretty 
pass  indeed  when  the  nation  is  divided  into  two 
classes:  those  growling  against  the  taxation  of 
their  surplus ;  and  those  with  their  tongues  hang- 
ing out  in  anticipation  of,  and  their  hands  clutch- 
ing for,  unearned  doles.  And  now,  the  more 
shame  to  us,  must  be  added  a  third  class  who 
use  public  office  for  private  profit.  What  if  we 
all  turned  to  and  gave  something  without  being 
forced  to  do  so  ?  Where  would  the  ' '  Yellow  peril ' ' 
and  the  "  German  menace "  be  then?  We  should 
have  much  less  exciting  and  inciting  talk  and 
writing  if  our  nerves  and  digestions  were  in  bet- 
ter order.  Nothing  calms  the  nerves,  increases 
confidence,  and  lessens  the  chance  of  promiscu- 
ous quarrelling  better  than  hard  work. 

Even  if  what  the  German  army  has  accom- 


424     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

plished  along  these  lines  were  not  true,  there  can 
be  no  freedom  of  political  speculation  or  experi- 
ment, no  time  to  make  mistakes  and  to  retrieve 
the  situation,  when  one  is  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  overt  or  potential  enemies.  Germany 
must  have  a  powerful  army  and  fleet,  must  have 
a  strong  and  autocratic  government,  or  she  is 
lost.  "Ohne  Armee  kein  Deutschland."  She 
can  permit  no  silly,  no  stupid,  no  excited  major- 
ity to  imperil  her  safety  as  a  nation.  If  Germany 
were  governed  as  is  France,  where  they  have  had 
nine  new  governments  since  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century,  and  forty-four  since  the  re- 
public replaced  the  empire  forty-one  years  ago — 
not  counting  six  dismissals  of  the  cabinet  when 
the  prime  minister  remained — or  fifty  changes 
of  government  in  less  than  that  number  of  years, 
Germany  would  have  lost  her  place  on  the  map. 
France  remains  only  because,  so  far  as  defence 
is  concerned,  France  is  France  plus  the  British 
fleet. 

Political  geography  is  the  sufficient  reason  for 
Germany's  army  and  navy.  Let  us  be  fair  in 
these  judgments  and  admit  at  once,  that  if  Japan 
were  where  Mexico  is,  and  Russia  where  Canada 
is,  and  Germany  separated  from  us  by  a  few 
hours'  steaming,  certain  peace-mongers  would 
have  been  hanged  long  ago,  and  our  cooing  doves 
of  peace  would  have  had  molten  tar  mixed  with 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  425 

their  feathers.  An  Italian  proverb  runs,  "It  is 
easy  to  scoff  at  a  bull  from  a  window,"  and  we 
indulge  in  not  a  little  of  such  babyish  effrontery 
from  our  safe  place  in  the  world.  Germany,  on 
the  other  hand,  looks  out  upon  the  world  from 
no  such  safe  window-seat;  she  is  down  in  the 
ring,  and  must  be  prepared  at  all  hazards  to  take 
care  of  herself.  That  is  a  reason,  too,  why  Ger- 
many offers  little  resistance  to  the  ruling  of  an 
autocratic  militarism.  The  sailors  and  the 
stokers  would  rather  obey  captain  and  officers, 
however  they  may  have  been  chosen  for  them, 
than  to  be  sunk  at  sea;  and  nowadays  Germany 
is  ever  on  the  high  seas,  battling  hard  to  protect 
and  to  increase  her  commerce  abroad,  and  to 
protect  her  huge  industrial  population  at  home. 
Germany  can  take  no  chances  for  the  moment, 
for  only  "Wer  sich  regiert,  der  ist  mit  Zufall 
fertig." 

One  wishes  often  that  one's  lips  were  not 
sealed,  one's  pen  not  stayed  by  the  imperious 
demands  of  honor,  to  abstain  from  all  mention 
of  discoveries  or  conversations  made  under  the 
roof  of  hospitality,  for  nothing  could  well  be 
more  enlightening  than  a  description  of  a  chat 
between  the  great  war-lord  of  Germany  and  a 
leading  pacifist:  the  one  completely  equipped 
with  knowledge  of  the  history,  temper,  and  tern- 


426     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

perament  of  his  people;  the  other  obsessed  by  a 
fantastic  exaggeration  of  the  power  and  influence 
of  money,  even  in  the  world  of  culture  and  in- 
ternational politics,  and  preaching  his  panacea 
in  the  land,  of  all  others,  where  even  now  mere 
money  has  the  least  influence,  all  honor  to  that 
land! 

Spinoza,  the  greatest  of  modern  Jews,  and  the 
father  of  modern  philosophy,  writes:  "It  is  not 
enough  to  point  out  what  ought  to  be;  we  must 
also  point  out  what  can  be,  so  that  every  one 
may  receive  his  due  without  depriving  others  of 
what  is  due  to  them."  And  in  another  place: 
"Things  should  not  be  the  subject  of  ridicule  or 
complaint,  but  should  be  understood."  Those 
who  know  little  of  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  Germany,  and  particularly  of  Prussia, 
cannot  possibly  understand  another  reason  for 
the  political  apathy  of  the  Germans  and  their 
pleased  support  of  their  army.  It  is  this:  they 
have  been  trained  in  everything  except  self- 
government,  in  everything  except  politics.  Per- 
haps their  governors  know  them  better  than  we 
do.  Their  progress  has  come  from  direction 
from  above,  not  from  assertion  from  below. 
The  art  or  arts  of  self-government,  throughout 
their  development  as  a  nation,  have  been  forcibly 
omitted  from  their  curriculum.  Every  step  in 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  427 

our  national  progress,  on  the  contrary,  has  been 
taken  by  the  people,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  break- 
ing their  way  up  and  out  into  light  and  freedom. 
There  is  little  or  no  trace  of  any  such  movement 
of  the  people  in  Germany,  and  there  is  little 
taste  for  it,  and  no  experience  to  make  such  effort 
successful.  We,  who  have  profited  by  the  teach- 
ing of  this  political  experience,  do  not  realize  in 
the  least  how  handicapped  are  the  people  who 
have  not  had  it. 

One  hundred  years  ago  half  the  inhabitants  of 
Prussia  were  practically  in  the  toils  of  serfdom. 
It  was  only  by  an  edict  of  1807,  to  take  effect 
in  J^SH),  that  personal  serfdom  with  its  conse- 
quences, especially  the  oppressive  obligation  of 
menial  service,  was  abolished  in  the  Prussian 
monarchy.  Caste  extended  actually  to  land. 
All  land  had  a  certain  status,  from  which  the 
owners  and  their  retainers  took  their  political 
position  and  rights.  The  edict  of  1807  was  in 
reality  a  land  reform  bill,  and  gave  for  the  first 
time  free  trade  in  land  in  Prussia.  It  was  von 
Stein,  a  Bismarck  born  too  soon,  who  induced 
Frederick  William  II,  King  of  Prussia,  and 
grandson  of  the  Great  Elector,  to  abolish  serf- 
dom, to  open  the  civil  service  to  all  classes,  and 
to  concede  certain  municipal  rights  to  the  towns. 
But  von  Stein  was  dismissed  from  the  service 


428     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  his  weak-kneed  sovereign  on  the  ground  that  he 
was  an  enemy  of  France,  and  was  obliged  to  take 
refuge  in  Russia.  Like  other  martyrs,  his  efforts 
watered  the  political  earth  for  a  fruitful  harvest. 
It  is  well  to  know  where  we  are  in  the  world's 
culture  and  striving  when  we  speak  of  other 
nations.  What  were  we  doing,  what  was  the 
rest  of  the  world  doing,  in  those  days  when  the 
Hanoverian  peasant's  son,  Scharnhorst,  and 
Clausewitz  were  about  to  lay  the  foundations  of 
this  German  army,  now  the  most  perfect  ma- 
chine of  its  kind  in  the  world?  These  were  the 
days  prepared  for  by  Jonathan  Edwards,  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  Voltaire,  Rousseau;  by  Pitt  and 
Louis  XV,  and  George  III;  the  days  of  near 
memories  of  Wolfe,  Montcalm,  and  Clive;  days 
when  Hogarth  was  caricaturing  London;  days 
when  the  petticoats  of  the  Pompadour  swept 
both  India  and  Canada  into  the  possession  of 
England.  These  names  and  the  atmosphere  they 
produce,  show  by  comparison  how  rough  a  fellow 
was  this  Prussia  of  only  a  hundred  years  ago. 
He  had  not  come  into  the  circle  of  the  polite  or  of 
the  political  world.  He  was  tumbling  about,  un- 
licked,  untaught,  inexperienced,  already  forget- 
ful of  the  training  of  the  greatest  school-master 
of  the  previous  century,  Frederick  the  Great, 
who  had  made  a  man  of  him. 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  429 

We  were  already  politicians  to  a  man  in  those 
days,  and  the  Englishman  Pitt  was  map-maker, 
by  special  warrant,  to  all  Europe. 

When  the  Prussians  were  serfs  politically,  our 
House  of  Representatives,  in  1796,  debated 
whether  to  insert  in  their  reply  to  the  President's 
rpeech  the  remark  that  "this  nation  is  the  freest 
and  most  enlightened  in  the  world."  It  is  true 
that  this  was  at  the  time  when  Europe  was  pro- 
ducing Lessing,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Kant,  Hegel, 
Fichte,  Mozart,  Haydn,  Herschel,  and  about 
ready  to  introduce  Walter  Scott,  Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  Heine,  Balzac,  Beethoven,  and  Cuvier; 
when  Turner  was  painting,  Watt  building  the 
steam-engine,  Napoleon  in  command  of  the 
French  armies,  and  Nelson  of  the  British  fleet; 
but  this  bombastic  babble  of  ours  harmed  no- 
body then,  and  only  serves  to  show  what  a 
number  of  intellectual  serfs  must  have  been 
members  of  that  particular  House  of  Represent- 
atives. 

We  have  not  overcome  this  habit  of  slapdash 
comparative  criticism,  for  only  the  other  day  a 
distinguished  American  inventor  left  Berlin  with 
these  words  as  his  final  message:  "We  have 
nothing  to  learn  from  Germany."  But  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  where  does  the  American  of 
sober  intelligence,  if  Lincoln  be  omitted,  find  a 


430     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

match  for  Bismarck  as  a  statesman,  Heine  as  a 
wit  and  song- writer,  Wagner,  Brahms,  and  Bee- 
thoven as  musicians,  Goethe  as  a  man  of  letters 
and  poet,  the  still  living  influence  of  Lessing  and 
Winckelmann  as  critics,  Fichte  as  a  scholarly  pa- 
triot, Hegel  and  Kant  as  philosophers,  von  Hum- 
boldt,  Liebig,  Helmholtz,  Bunsen,  and  Haeckel 
as  scientists,  Moltke  and  Roon  as  soldiers, 
Ranke  and  Mommsen  as  historians,  Auerbach, 
Spielhagen,  Sudermann,  Freytag,  "Fritz"  Reu- 
ter,  and  Hauptmann  as  novelists  and  dramatists, 
Krupp  and  Borsig  as  manufacturers,  and  the 
Rothschilds  as  bankers?  Lincoln,  Lee,  Sherman, 
Jackson,  and  Grant  may  equal  these  men  in  their 
own  departments,  but  aside  from  them  our  only 
superiority,  and  a  very  questionable  superiority 
it  is,  lies  in  our  trust-and-tariff -incubated  million- 
aires. Let  us  try  to  see  straight,  if  only  that  we 
may  learn  and  profit  by  the  superiority  of  others. 

These  explanations  that  I  have  given,  his- 
torical, political,  external,  and  internal,  offer 
reasons  worth  pondering  both  why  we  do  not 
understand  Germany's  huge  armament  and  why 
Germany  looks  upon  it  as  a  necessity. 

However  much  the  expenditure  on  fleet  and 
army  may  be  disguised,  the  burden  is  colossal. 
In  the  year  1878  the  net  expenditure,  ordinary 
and  extraordinary,  for  purposes  of  defence,  for 


THT   GERMAN  ARMY  431 


army  and  navy  and  all  other  military  purposes 
whatsoever  including  pensions,  amounted  to  452,- 
000,000  marks;  in  1888,  to  660,000,000  marks; 
in  1898,  to  882,000,000  marks;  and  in  1908,  to 
1,481,000,000  marks. 

The  total  expenses,  net,  of  the  empire  in  1908 
were  1,735,000,000  marks,  showing  that  only 
254,000,000  marks  out  of  the  grand  total  of 
1,735,000,000  were  spent  for  other  than  military 
purposes.  As  the  army  and  navy  now  stand  at 
a  peace  strength  of  some  700,000  men,  and  as 
these  men  are  all  in  the  prime  of  their  working 
power,  the  loss  in  wages  and  in  productive  work 
may  be  put  very  conservatively  at  600,000,000 
marks,  which  brings  the  cost  of  the  support  of 
the  military  establishment  of  Germany  up  to 
2,000,000,000  marks  and  more  per  annum,  or 
$500,000,000. 

Many  Americans  were  dismayed  when  our 
total  national  expenditure  reached  the  $1,000,- 
000,000  point,  and  the  Congress  voting  this 
expenditure  was  nicknamed  the  "Billion-dollar 
Congress."  What  would  we  say  of  an  expen- 
diture of  half  a  billion  dollars  for  defence  alone! 
With  what  admiration,  too,  must  we  regard 
65,000,000  people,  living  in  an  area  one  quarter 
smaller  than  Texas,  on  a  by-no-means  rich  or 
fertile  soil,  who  can  bear  cheerfullv  the  burden, 


432     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

each  year,  of  half  our  total  national  expendi- 
ture, merely  on  the  military  and  naval  barri- 
cade which  enables  them  to  toil  in  peace  and 
security. 

Humanity  has,  indeed,  made  but  a  poor  zigzag 
progress  from  the  gorilla;  Christianity,  just  now 
engaged  in  blessing  the  rival  banners  of  warriors 
setting  out  for  one  another's  throats,  has  failed 
ignominiously  to  bring  the  wolf  in  man  to  bap- 
tism, when  the  central  state  of  Christian  Europe 
must  arm  to  the  teeth  one  in  every  eighteen  of 
her  adult  male  inhabitants,  and  spend  half  a 
billion  dollars  a  year,  to  protect  herself  from 
assault  and  plunder. 

If  the  hairy,  skin-clad  cave-dwellers,  or  the 
man  who  left  us  the  Neanderthal  skull,  could 
have  a  look  at  us  now,  here  in  Berlin,  in  many 
ways  the  centre  of  the  most  enlightened  people 
in  the  world,  they  would  undoubtedly  go  mad 
trying  to  understand  what  we  mean  by  the  word 
"progress."  And  yet  we  smile  indulgently  at 
the  poor  farmers  in  Afghanistan  who  till  their 
fields  with  a  rifle  slung  across  their  shoulders. 
What  is  Germany  doing  but  that!  And  an 
enormously  heavy  rifle  it  is,  costing  just  seven 
times  as  much  as  all  other  national  expenditures 
together;  in  short,  it  costs  seven  marks  of  sol- 
dier to  protect  every  one  mark  of  plough.  I 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  433 

admit  frankly  the  horror  and  the  absurdity  of 
all  this;  but  as  an  argument  for  disarmament, 
"it  does  not  lie,"  as  the  lawyers  phrase  it.  It  is 
a  criticism,  and  an  unanswerable  one,  of  our 
failure  as  human  beings  to  enthrone  reason  and 
to  tame  our  passions;  but  it  is  a  veritable  call 
to  arms  to  protect  ourselves,  not  a  reason  for 
not  doing  so.  Let  the  international  gluttons 
overeat  themselves  till  they  are  seriously  ill; 
but  it  would  be  madness  to  starve  ourselves  in 
the  meantime,  and  yet  that  is  the  grotesque  logic 
of  certain  of  our  preachers  of  disarmament. 

At  the  moment  of  writing  there  are  1,000,000 
men  at  each  other's  throats  in  the  Balkans, 
there  is  a  revolution  in  Mexico,  and  incipient 
anarchy  in  Central  America;  as  an  emollient  to 
this,  Great  Britain  is  about  to  present  a  bust  of 
the  late  King  Edward  to  the  Peace  Palace  at  the 
Hague!  I  can  imagine  myself  saying  "Pretty 
pussy,  nice  pussy,"  to  the  wild-cats  I  have  shot 
in  Nebraska  and  Dakota,  but  I  should  not  be 
here  if  I  had;  and  however  small  my  value 
to  the  world  I  live  in,  I  estimate  it  as  worth  at 
least  a  ton  of  wild-cats. 

I  am  bound,  however,  in  fairness  to  call  the 
attention  of  the  unwary  dabbler  in  statistics  to 
a  point  of  grave  importance  in  dealing  with  Ger- 
man finances.  The  German  Empire,  so  far  as 


434     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

expenditure  and  income  are  concerned,  is  merely 
an  office,  a  clearing-house  so  to  speak,  for  the 
states  which  together  make  up  the  empire.  The 
expenses  of  the  empire,  for  example,  in  1910  were 
$757,900,000  and  of  the  army  and  navy,  includ- 
ing extraordinary  expenditures,  $314,919,325; 
this  does  not  include  pensions,  clerical  expenses, 
interest,  sinking-fund,  and  loss  of  productive 
labor,  as  did  the  figures  on  a  preceding  page. 
To  the  ignorant  or  to  the  malicious,  who  quote 
these  figures  to  bolster  up  a  socialist  or  pacifist 
preachment,  this  looks  as  though  Germany  had 
spent  one  half  of  her  grand  total  on  the  army  and 
navy.  But  this  is  quite  wrong.  In  addition  to 
the  expenditures  of  this  imperial  clearing-house 
called  the  German  Empire,  there  was  spent  by 
the  states  $1,467,325,000 :  the  so-called  clearing- 
house bearing  the  whole  burden  of  expenses  for 
army  and  navy,  the  separate  states  nothing  ex- 
cept the  per  capita  tax,  called  the  matriculation 
tax,  of  some  80  pfennigs.  To  make  this  matter 
still  more  clear,  as  it  is  a  constant  source  of  error 
not  only  to  the  foreigner  but  to  the  Germans 
themselves,  the  income  of  the  empire  for  1910 
was  $757,900,000,  the  income  of  all  the  states 
$1,463,150,000,  or  of  the  empire  and  the  states 
combined  $2,221,050,000.  In  the  same  way  the 
debt  of  the  empire  in  1910  stood  at  $1,224,- 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  435 

150,000,  and  the  debt  of  the  states  of  the  empire 
at  $3,856,325,000,  or  a  grand  total  outstanding 
indebtedness  of  all  Germany  of  $5,080,475,000. 

Of  late  years  the  imperial  expenditure  of  Great 
Britain,  for  example,  has  amounted  to  some 
$935,000,000  a  year;  but  various  local  bodies 
spend  also  some  $900,000,000  a  year.  Some 
of  this  is  cross-spending,  but  the  grand  total 
amounts  to  some  $1,500,000,000  a  year. 

Before  writing  or  speaking  of  Germany  it  is 
well  to  know  at  least  what  Germany  is.  To  pick 
up  a  hand-book  and  to  quote  therefrom  the  fig- 
ures relating  to  the  German  Empire,  as  though 
these  covered  Germany,  as  is  often  done,  is  as 
accurate  and  helpful  to  the  inquirer,  as  though 
one  should  take  the  figures  of  the  New  York 
clearing-house  as  accurate  descriptions  of  the 
total  and  detailed  business  of  all  the  New  York 
banks  and  trust  companies.  A  clearing-house  is 
merely  a  piece  of  machinery  for  the  adjustment 
of  differences  between  a  host  of  debtors  and 
creditors.  The  comparative  cost  of  the  German 
army  and  navy  can  only  be  figured  properly 
against  the  income  and  expenditure  of  the  total 
wealth  of  all  Germany.  And  all  Germany  is 
something  more  than  the  German  Empire, 
which  in  certain  respects  is  only  a  book-keeper, 
an  adjuster  of  differences. 


436    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"Was  ist  des  Deutschen  Vaterland? 
Ist's  Preussenland?     Ist's  Schwabenland? 
Ist's  wo  am  Rhein  die  Hebe  bliiht? 
Ist's  wo  am  Belt  die  Move  zieht? 
O  nein!     O  nein!     O  nein! 
Sein  Vaterland  muss  grosser  sein. 

"Das  ganze  Deutschland  soil  es  sein! 
O  Gott  vom  Himmel,  sieh'  darein, 
Und  gib  uns  rechten  deutschen  Muth; 
Dass  wir  es  lieben  treu  und  gut! 
Das  soil  es  sein!   das  soil  es  sein! 
Das  ganze  Deutschland  soil  es  sein!" 

The  official  title  of  the  sovereign  is  not  Em- 
peror of  Germany,  or  Emperor  of  the  Germans, 
but  German  Emperor.  Thus  the  territorial 
rights  of  other  heads  of  states  are  safeguarded. 
Even  the  popularity  of  the  first  Emperor,  who 
wished  to  be  named  Emperor  of  Germany  and 
who  disputed  with  Bismarck  for  hours  over  the 
question,  could  not  bring  this  about,  and  he  was 
proclaimed  at  Versailles  merely  German  Em- 
peror. 

However  heavy  the  burden  of  armament  may 
be,  we  must  be  careful  to  put  such  expenditure 
in  its  proper  perspective  and  in  its  proper  rela- 
tions, not  only  to  the  German  Empire,  which  for 
official,  clerical,  and  statistical  matters  is  quite 
a  different  entity,  but  to  "das  ganze  Deutsch- 
land." The  German  Empire  is  the  clearing- 
house, the  adjutant,  the  executive  officer,  the 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  437 

official  clerk,  the  representative  in  many  social, 
financial,  military,  and  diplomatic  capacities  of 
Germany ;  but  it  is  not,  and  never  for  a  moment 
should  be  confused  with,  what  all  Germans  love, 
and  what  it  has  cost  them  blood  and  tears  and 
great  sacrifices  to  bring  into  the  circle  of  the 
nations,  the  German  Fatherland! 

In  1910  the  total  funded  debt  of  the  empire 
amounted  to  4,896,600,000  marks,  and  the  debt 
in  1912  had  risen  to  5,396,887,801  marks.  In 
the  six  years  ending  March,  1911,  Germany's 
debt  increased  by  $415,000,000. 

In  1910  the  funded  debt  of  Germany  (empire 
and  states)  was  $4,896,600,000;  of  France  $6,- 
905,000,000;  of  England  $3,894,500,000,  and  of 
Russia  $4,880,750,000.  It  is  a  curious  psychical 
and  social  phenomenon  that,  though  we  are  as 
suspicious  as  criminals  of  one  another's  good 
faith  in  keeping  the  peace,  we  are  veritable  angels 
of  innocence  in  trusting  one  another  financially, 
for  back  of  these  huge  debts  we  keep  in  ready 
money,  that  is,  gold,  to  pay  them:  Germany  at 
the  present  writing  $275,000,000  in  the  Reichs- 
bank;  France  $640,000,000  in  the  Bank  of  France; 
England  a  paltry  $175,000,000  in  the  Bank  of 
England;  and  Russia  $625,000,000  in  the  Bank 
of  Russia.  We  all  live  upon  credit,  an  elastic 
moral  tie  which  seems  to  be  illimitably  stretch- 


able,  and  both  a  nation's  and  an  individual's 
wealth  is  measured  not  by  what  he  has,  but  by 
what  he  is,  that  is  to  say,  by  his  character  or 
credit.  It  is  startling  to  find  how  we  distrust  one 
another  along  certain  lines  and  how  we  trust  one 
another  along  others.  The  total  amount  of  gold 
in  these  four  countries  would  just  about  pay  the 
interest  at  four  per  cent,  for  two  years  on  their 
total  indebtedness! 

From  what  we  have  seen  of  the  proportion  of 
expenditure  that  goes  to  military  purposes,  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  Germany  is  increasing  her 
liabilities  at  an  extraordinary  rate,  and  largely 
for  purposes  of  protection.  In  the  last  two  years 
the  interest  on  her  increased  debt  alone,  at  four 
per  cent.,  amounts  to  $5,000,000;  while  the  in- 
terest at  four  per  cent,  upon  military  expendi- 
tures of  all  kinds  amounts  to  the  tidy  sum  of 
$20,000,000  per  annum.  The  German,  however, 
faces  these  facts  and  figures,  not  as  a  matter  of 
choice,  not  as  a  matter  of  insurance  wholly,  but 
as  a  hard  necessity.  It  is  what  the  delayed  con- 
version of  the  world  is  costing  him,  not  to  speak 
of  what  it  costs  the  rest  of  us.  He  is  surrounded 
by  enemies ;  he  is  not  by  nature  a  fighting  man ; 
his  whole  industrial  and  commercial  progress 
and  his  amassed  wealth  have  come  from  training, 
training,  training;  and  he  sees  no  alternative, 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  439 

and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  see  none  either,  but 
a  nation  trained  also  to  defence,  cost  what  it 

The  last  German  estimates  (1912)  balance 
with  a  revenue  and  expenditure  of  $671,222,605. 
The  naval  expenditure  is  put  at  $114,306,575;  the 
army  expenditure  is  put  at  $192,627,080.  Both 
the  army  and  navy  are  being  largely  increased. 
In  the  year  1916  the  strength  of  the  navy 
is  expected  to  be  about  79,000  men,  and  of 
the  army  and  navy  combined  767,000.  In  the 
last  ten  years  two  nations  have  almost  doubled 
their  naval  personnel:  Germany  has  increased 
hers  from  31,157  to  60,805,  and  Austria-Hun- 
gary from  9,069  to  17,277.  In  Great  Britain  the 
increase  has  been  about  one  seventh,  and  this 
one  seventh  is  about  equal  to  the  present  strength 
of  Austria. 

The  gross  naval  expenditure,  estimated,  of  the 
United  States  for  1912  amounts  to  $132,848,030, 
and  the  number  of  men  63,468.  The  gross  naval 
expenditure  of  Great  Britain,  estimated,  for  the 
same  year  is  put  at  $224,410,235,  and  the  number 
of  men  134,000.  The  gross  naval  expenditure  of 
Germany  is  put  at  $114,306,575,  which  includes 
$489,235  for  air-ships  and  experiments  there- 
with, the  number  of  men  66,783.  France  pro- 
poses to  spend,  plus  an  addition  due  to  opera- 


440     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

tions  in  Morocco,  $90,000,000,  number  of  men 
58,404;  and  Japan  $44,309,145,  number  of  men 
49,389.  TwonewcorDS  haveJaeeiuyQied  f  or_the 
German  army,  to  be  numbered  24  and  25;  one 
is  for  the  Russian  frontier,  with  head-quarters  at 
Allenstein,  and  the  other  for  the  Frenchjrontier, 
with  head-quarters  at  Sarrebourg  or  Mulhouse. 
A  German  army  corps  on  a  war  footing  com- 
prises about  52,000  men,  with  150  guns  and 
16,000  horses.  The  reader  should  notice,  as  a  re- 
minder of  the  still  latent  jealousies  of  the  differ- 
ent states  of  the  German  Empire,  that  the  three 
army  corps  raised  in  Bavaria  are  not  numbered 
consecutively,  twenty-one,  twenty-two,  and 
twenty -three,  but  one,  two,  and  three! 

To  the  American  the  pay  of  the  German 
troops,  officers  and  men,  is  ludicrously  small.  It 
is  evident  that  men  do  not  undertake  to  fit  them- 
selves to  be  officers,  and  to  struggle  through  fre- 
quent and  severe  examinations  to  remain  officers, 
for  the  pay  they  receive.  A  lieutenant  receives 
for  the  first  three  years  $300  a  year,  from  the 
fourth  to  the  sixth  year  $425,  from  the  seventh  to 
the  ninth  year  $495,  from  the  tenth  to  the  twelfth 
year  $550,  and  after  the  twelfth  year  $600  a 
year.  A  captain  receives  from  the  first  to  the 
fourth  year  $850,  from  the  fifth  to  the  eighth 
year  $1,150,  and  the  ninth  year  and  after  $1,275 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  441 

a  year.  Of  one  hundred  officers  who  join,  only 
an  average  of  eight  ever  attain  to  the  command  of 
a  regiment.  In  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg,  pro- 
motion is  quicker  by  from  one  to  three  years 
than  in  Prussia.  In  Prussia  promotion  to  Ober- 
leutnant  averages  10  years,  to  captain  or  Ritt- 
meister  15  years,  to  major  25  years,  to  colonel  33 
years,  and  to  general  37  years.  It  would  not  be 
altogether  inhuman  if  these  gentlemen  occasion- 
ally drank  a  toast  to  war  and  pestilence ! 

A  commanding  general,  or  general  inspector 
of  cavalry  or  field  artillery,  receives  $3,495;  a 
division  commander,  or  inspector  of  cavalry, 
field  and  heavy  artillery,  $3,388;  a  brigade  com- 
mander, $2,565;  commander  of  a  regiment,  or 
officer  of  the  general  staff  of  the  same  rank, 
$2,193.  There  are  various  additions  to  these 
sums  for  travelling,  keep  of  horses,  house-rent, 
and  the  like.  All  soldiers  and  officers  travel  at 
reduced  rates  on  the  railways,  and  are  allowed  a 
certain  amount  of  luggage  free.  It  is  a  commen- 
tary upon  the  three  nations,  that  in  Germany  the 
soldier  receives  a  reduced  rate  when  travelling, 
in  England  the  golfer  pays  a  reduced  rate,  and 
in  America,  until  lately,  the  politicians  were 
given  free  passes.  One  could  almost  produce  the 
three  countries  from  that  limited  knowledge. 

At  the  cadet  school  at  Gross  Lichterfelde  there 


442    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

are  a  thousand  pupils.  They  are  taught  riding, 
swimming,  dancing,  French,  English,  mathe- 
matics, and  of  course  receive  technical  military 
instruction.  The  fee  is  $200,  but  for  the  sons  of 
officers,  and  according  to  their  means,  the  fees 
are  reduced  to  $112,  $75,  and  even  as  low  as  $22, 
and  in  some  deserving  cases  no  fee  at  all  is 
charged. 

There  is  no  professional  army  in  Germany,  as 
in  England  and  in  America.  Every  German 
who  is  physically  fit  must  serve  practically  from 
the  age  of  seventeen  to  forty -five.  Those  in  the 
infantry  serve  two  years;  those  in  the  cavalry 
and  horse  artillery  and  mounted  rifles,  three 
years.  About  forty -eight  per  cent,  who  are  ex- 
amined are  rejected  as  unfit,  not  necessarily  be- 
cause they  are  incapable  of  service,  but  because 
the  expense  of  training  all  is  too  great.  These 
men  receive  40  pfennigs  a  day,  27  pfennigs  being 
deducted  for  their  food. 

There  are  some  40,000  men  who  join  the  army 
voluntarily  for  a  term  of  two  or  three  years,  and 
who  re-enlist  and  become  non-commissioned 
officers,  and  if  they  remain  twelve  years  they  are 
entitled  to  $200  on  leaving  the  service,  and  head 
the  lists  of  candidates  for  the  railway,  postal, 
police,  street-cleaning,  and  other  civil  services, 
3ome  10,000  men  who  have  passed  a  certain 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  443 

examination  serve  only  one  year  and  are  entitled 
to  certain  privileges. 

Each  man  in  the  infantry  serves  2  years  in  the 
active  army,  5  years  in  the  active  reserve,  5  years 
in  the  first  division  of  the  Landwehr,  6  years  in 
the  second  division  of  the  Landwehr,  and  6  years 
in  the  Landsturm.  Colonel  Gadke  calculates  that 
Germany  has  now  under  arms  not  less  than 
714,000  soldiers  and  sailors,  and  that  4,800,000 
can  be  put  into  the  field  if  wanted  out  of  the 
6,000,000  who  have  done  service  with  the  colors. 
Out  of  this  enormous  total,  practically  none,  ac- 
cording to  the  last  census,  is  illiterate.  Our 
American  census  of  1910  gives  the  number  of 
men  of  militia  age  in  New  England  as  1,458,900, 
and  in  the  whole  country  20,473, 6L4. 

Promotion  from  the  ranks,  as  we  understand 
it,  is  practically  unknown.  The  German  officers 
pass  through  the  ranks,  it  is  true,  as  part  of  their 
education  at  the  beginning  of  their  military 
career,  but  those  who  do  so  join  in  the  beginning 
as  candidates  for  commissions,  and  have  been 
provisionally  accepted  by  the  commander  and 
officers  of  the  regiment  they  propose  to  join,  as 
must  every  candidate  for  a  commission  in  the 
German  army.  If  the  candidate  is  not  wanted, 
it  is  hinted  to  him  that  this  is  the  case,  and  he 
must  go  elsewhere,  as  this  decision  is  final.  Every 


444     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

German  regiment's  officers'  mess  is  thus  in  some 
sort  a  club. 

Officers  are  supplied  from  the  cadet  corps,  and 
from  those  who  join  the  ranks  as  candidates  for 
commissions.  All  cadets  must  pass  through  a 
war-school  before  obtaining  a  commission.  Of 
these  there  are  10  in  Prussia,  Wiirtemberg,  and 
Saxony,  and  1  at  Munich  in  Bavaria.  They 
there  receive  their  commissions  as  second  lieu- 
tenants. There  are  9  Prussian  schools,  the 
Hauptkadettenanstalt  at  Gross  Lichterfelde,  and 
8  Kadetten-Hauser;  and  1  at  Dresden  and  1  at 
Munich.  Some  of  these  I  have  visited,  and  been 
made  at  home  with  the  greatest  courtesy  and  hos- 
pitality. These  German  cadet  schools  are  to  a 
great  extent  charitable  institutions  for  the  sons 
of  officers  and  civilian  officials.  The  charges 
range,  as  I  have  indicated  above,  from  $200  a 
year  to  nothing  at  all. 

There  are  in  addition  schools  of  musketry,  a 
school  for  instruction  in  machine-gun  practice, 
instruction  in  infantry  battalion  practice,  a 
school  of  military  gymnastics,  of  military  equita- 
tion, officers'  riding-schools,  a  military  technical 
academy  at  Charlottenburg,  where  officers  may 
study  the  technical  engineering  and  communi- 
cation services,  an  artillery  and  engineer  school 
at  Munich,  a  field-artillery  school  of  gunnery,  a 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  445 

foot-artillery  school  of  gunnery,  a  cavalry  tele- 
graph school,  and  the  staff  colleges. 

Of  technical  military  matters  I  know  nothing. 
I  have  some  experience  in  handling  horses  in 
harness  and  under  saddle,  and  on  subjects  with 
which  I  am  familiar  I  venture  to  pass  judgments 
in  the  class-room.  I  have  visited  many  of  these 
class-rooms,  and  listened  to  the  teaching  and 
lectures  in  French,  English,  strategy,  and  polit- 
ical geography,  and  kindred  topics,  and  if  the 
rest  of  the  instruction  is  on  a  par  with  what  I 
heard  there  is  no  criticism  to  be  made.  I  may 
not  say  where,  but  one  of  the  instructors  in 
French  was  a  real  pleasure  to  listen  to. 

The  courses  and  examinations  which  lead  up, 
in  the  Kriegesakademie,  or  staff  college,  to  the 
grade  of  fitness  for  the  general  staff,  or  the  tech- 
nical division  of  the  general  staff,  or  administra- 
tive staff  work,  or  employment  as  instructors, 
are  of  the  very  stiffest.  An  officer  who  succeeds 
in  reaching  such  proficiency,  that  he  is  sent  up 
to  the  general  staff  must  be  a  very  blue  ribbon 
of  a  scholar  in  his  own  field. 

The  quarters,  the  food,  the  training,  are  Spar- 
tan indeed  at  the  cadet  schools,  but  how  valu- 
able that  is,  is  shown  in  the  faces,  manners, 
physique,  and  general  bearing  of  the  picked 
youths  one  sees  at  the  Kriegesakademie  in  Ber- 


446     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

lin.  No  one  after  seeing  these  fellows  would  deny 
for  a  moment  the  value  of  a  sound,  hard  disci- 
pline. The  same  may  be  seen  at  our  own  West 
Point,  where  the  transformation  of  many  a 
country  bumpkin,  into  an  officer  and  a  gentle- 
man, in  four  years  is  almost  unbelievable. 

The  truth  is  that  most  of  us  suffer  from  lack 
of  discipline,  and  the  intelligent  men  of  every 
nation  will  one  day  insist  that,  if  the  state  is  to 
meddle  in  insurance  and  other  matters,  it  must 
logically,  and  for  its  own  salvation,  demand 
compulsory  service;  not  necessarily  for  war,  but 
for  social  and  economic  peace  within  its  own 
boundaries.  It  is  a  political  absurdity  that  you 
may  tax  individuals  to  provide  against  accident 
and  sickness  to  themselves,  but  that  you  may 
not  tax  individuals  by  compulsory  service  to 
provide  against  accident  and  sickness  to  the 
state.  There  can  be  nothing  but  ultimate  con- 
fusion where  the  state  pays  a  man  if  he  is  ill, 
pays  him  if  he  is  hurt,  pays  him  when  he  is  old, 
and  yet  does  not  force  him  to  keep  well,  and  thus 
avoid  accident  and  a  pauper's  old  age  by  oblig- 
ing him  to  submit  to  two  or  three  years'  sound 
physical  training.  Whether  the  training  is  done 
with  a  gun  or  without  it  matters  little.  Most 
men  of  our  breed  like  to  know  how  to  kill  things, 
so  that  a  gun  would  probably  be  an  inducement. 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  447 

The  more  one  knows  of  the  severe  demands 
upon  the  officers  of  the  German  army  and  of 
their  small  pay,  the  more  one  realizes  that  if  they 
are  not  angels  there  must  be  some  further  ex- 
planation of  their  willingness  to  undertake  the 
profession.  First  of  all,  the  Emperor  is  a  soldier 
and  wears  at  all  times  the  soldier's  uniform. 
Further,  he  gives  from  his  private  purse  a  small 
allowance  monthly  to  the  poorer  officers  of  the 
guard  regiments.  A  German  officer  receives 
consideration  on  all  sides,  whether  it  be  in  a 
shop,  a  railway-carriage,  a  drawing-room,  or  at 
court. 

To  a  certain  extent  his  uniform  is  a  dowry;  he 
expects  and  often  gets  a  good  marriage  portion 
in  return  for  his  shoulder-straps  and  brass  but- 
tons ;  and  in  every  case  it  gives  him  a  recognized 
social  position,  in  a  country  where  the  social 
lines  are  drawn  far  more  strictly  than  in  any 
other  country  outside  of  Austria  and  India. 
This  constant  wearing  of  the  sword  is  no  new 
thing.  Tacitus,  who  would  have  been  an  un- 
compromising advocate  of  compulsory  service 
had  he  lived  in  our  time,  writes:  "A  German 
transacts  no  business,  public  or  private,  without 
being  completely  armed.  The  right  of  carrying 
arms  is  assumed  by  110  person  whatever  till  the 
state  has  declared  him  duly  qualified."  It  is 


448     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  recognized  occupation  of  the  nobility,  and, 
in  very  many  families,  a  tradition.  In  the  army 
of  Saxony,  on  January  1,  1911,  out  of  every 
hundred  officers  of  the  war  ministry,  of  the  gen- 
eral commands,  and  of  the  higher  staff,  44.33  per 
cent,  were  noblemen;  of  the  officers  of  the  infan- 
try, 26.19  were  noblemen;  of  the  cavalry,  60.92 
were  noblemen;  and  of  the  officers  of  the  entire 
army,  all  arms,  24.98  were  noblemen. 

It  is  worth  chronicling  in  this  connection,  for 
the  benefit  of  those  who  wish  a  real  insight  into 
German  social  life,  that  few  people  discriminate 
between  the  old  nobility,  or  men  who  take  their 
titles  from  the  possession  of  land  and  their  de- 
scendants, and  the  new  and  morbidly  disliked 
nobility,  who  have  bought  or  gained  their  patents 
of  nobility,  as  is  done  often  enough  in  England, 
by  profuse  contributions  to  charity  or  to  semi- 
political  and  cultural  undertakings  favored  by 
the  court,  or  by  direct  contributions  to  party 
funds,  by  valuable  services  rendered,  or  by  mere 
length  of  service.  This  new  nobility,  anxious 
about  their  status,  satisfied  to  have  arrived,  jeal- 
ous of  rivals,  are  the  dead  weight  which  ties 
Germany  fast  to  bureaucratic  government  and 
to  a  policy  of  no  change.  They  represent,  even 
in  educated  Germany,  a  complacent  mediocrity ; 
indignant  at  rebuke,  indifferent  to  progress, 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  449 

heedless  of  experience,  impatient  of  criticism, 
haters  of  haste,  and  jealous  of  superiority. 
Even  Bismarck,  the  creator  of  this  bureaucracy, 
lamented  the  insolence  and  bad  manners  of  the 
state  servants. 

The  essential  and  ever-present  quality  of  the 
real  aristocrat  and  of  a  real  aristocracy  is,  of 
course,  courage.  It  may  dislike  change,  but  it 
is  not  afraid  of  it.  The  real  gentleman,  of  course, 
does  not  care  whether  he  is  a  gentleman  or  not. 
The  characteristic  of  an  artificial,  tailor-made 
aristocracy  is  timidity  and  a  shrinking  from 
change.  This  new  nobility,  created  because  it 
is  carefully  charitable,  or  serviceable,  or  long 
in  office,  is  not  only  in  possession  of  the  civil 
service,  but  occupies  high  posts  in  the  army  and 
navy.  While  not  minimizing  its  value,  it  is 
everywhere  maintained  in  Germany  that  it  acts 
as  a  bulwark  against  progress.  They  are  a 
nobility  of  office-holders,  and  they  partake  of  the 
qualities  and  characteristics  of  the  office-holder 
everywhere.  They  sometimes  forget  the  coun- 
try in  the  office;  while  the  older  nobility,  which 
made  Germany,  despises  the  office  except  as  an 
instrument  or  weapon  to  be  used  for  the  welfare 
of  the  country.  The  political  pessimism  in  Ger- 
many to-day  is  caused  by,  and  comes  from,  this 
army  of  the  new  nobility. 


450     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Americans  and  English  both  write  of  Germany, 
and  speak  of  it,  as  being  in  the  grip  of  a  small 
group  of  aristocrats.  Not  at  all;  it  is  in  the  shaky 
and  self-conscious  control  of  men  whose  patents 
of  nobility  were  given  them  with  their  office,  a 
titled  bureaucracy,  in  short.  Let  us  prove  this 
statement  by  running  through  the  list  of  the 
chief  officers  of  the  state.  Of  the  officials  of  the 
German  Empire:  the  chancellor's  grandfather, 
Bethmann-Hollweg,  was  a  professor,  and  after- 
ward minister  of  education;  the  secretary  of 
state's  father  was  plain  Herr  Kiderlin-Wachter; 
the  under-secretary  of  state  is  Herr  Zimmer- 
mann;  the  secretary  of  the  interior  is  Herr  Del- 
briick;  of  finance,  Herr  Wermuth;  of  justice, 
Herr  Lisco;  of  the  navy,  von  Tirpitz,  who  was 
recently  ennobled;  the  postmaster  is  Herr 
Kraetke.  Not  one  of  these  officials  of  the  empire 
is  of  the  old  nobility! 

Of  the  11  ministers  of  the  kingdom  of  Prussia, 
the  minister  for  agriculture,  von  Schorlemer;  for 
war,  von  Heeringen;  for  education,  von  Trott 
zu  Solz;  and  for  the  interior,  von  Dallwitz,  are 
of  the  old  nobility;  but  the  other  7  ministers 
are  not.  Of  the  12  Oberprasidenten,  men  who 
rule  the  provinces,  6  are  noblemen;  of  the  37 
Regierungsprasidenten,  14  are  of  the  nobility, 
23  are  not.  This  should  dispose  finally  of  the 


THE   GERMAN  ARMY  451 

frequently  heard  assertion  that  Germany  and 
Prussia  are  ruled  by  a  small  group  of  the  landed 
nobility  and  that  there  is  no  way  open  to  the 
talents.  It  is  fair  to  say  that  a  very  small  and 
intimate  court  group  do  have  a  certain  influence 
in  naming  the  candidates  for  these  posts,  but 
they  are  too  wily  to  keep  these  positions  for 
themselves. 

I  suppose  we  all  like,  in  a  childish  way,  to  wear 
placards  of  our  prowess  in  the  form  of  orders 
and  decorations,  but  the  evening  attire  of  this 
bureaucratic  nobility  often  looks  as  though  there 
had  been  a  ceramic  eruption,  a  sort  of  measles 
of  decorations.  Men's  breasts  are  covered  with 
medals,  stars,  porcelain  plaques,  and  their  necks 
are  hung  with  ribbons  with  a  dangling  medallion, 
all  distributed  from  the  patriarchal  imperial 
Christmas-tree  for  every  conceivable  service  from 
cleaning  the  streets  to  preaching  properly  on  the 
imperial  yacht.  Men  collect  them  as  they  would 
stamps  or  butterflies,  and  some  of  them  must  be 
very  expert. 

The  officers  and  the  officials  who  are  recog- 
nized as  giving  their  services  as  a  family  tra- 
dition, as  a  patriotic  service,  or  out  of  sheer  love 
of  the  profession  of  arms,  are  rather  liked  than 
disliked,  and  give  a  tone  and  set  a  standard  for 
all  the  rest.  Both  these  officers  and  their  men 


452     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

are  respected.  Of  no  German  soldier  could  it  be 
written : 

"I  went  into  a  theatre  as  sober  as  could  be, 
They  gave  a  drunk  civilian  room,  but  'adn't  none  for  me; 
They  sent  me  to  the  gallery  or  round  the  music-'alls, 
But  when  it  comes  to  fightin',  Lord!   they'll  shove  me  in  the 
stalls." 

On  the  contrary,  every  effort  is  made  to  keep  the 
army  pleased  with  itself  and  proud  of  itself. 
The  chancellor  of  the  empire  is  always  given 
military  rank;  officers  are  not  allowed  to  marry 
unless  they  have,  or  acquire  by  marriage,  a  suit- 
able income;  the  dignity  of  the  officer  is  upheld 
and  his  pride  catered  to;  officers  are  made  to  feel 
that  they  are  the  darlings  of  the  Fatherland  by 
everybody  from  the  Emperor  down. 

This  artificial  stimulant  goes  far  to  keep  them 
contented,  and  the  fact  that  the  scale  of  comfort- 
able living  in  Germany  was  twenty  years  ago  far 
below,  and  is  even  now  not  equal  to,  that  of  the 
equivalent  classes  with  us  makes  the  task  easier. 
They  have  not  been  taught  to  want  the  things 
we  want,  and  are  still  satisfied  with  less.  And 
back  of  and  behind  it  all  is  the  feeling  among  the 
leaders,  that  the  army  furnishes  no  small  amount 
of  the  patriotic  cement  necessary  to  hold  Ger- 
many together.  Ulysses  lashed  himself  to  the 
mast  as  he  passed  the  sirens  of  luxury  and  lei- 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  453 

sure,  and  for  the  German  Ulysses  the  army  sup- 
plies the  cords.  It  is  not  the  foreign  student  of 
German  life  alone  who  notices  that  the  Germans, 
even  now,  seem  to  be  tribal  rather  than  national. 
The  best  friends  of  Germany  in  Germany  also 
recognize  this  weakness,  comment  upon  it,  and 
favor  every  possible  expedient  to  overcome  it. 

I  admit  frankly  my  admiration  for  this  Spar- 
tan three  quarters  of  a  million  of  soldiers  and 
sailors,  and  their  officers.  It  offers  a  splendid 
example  of  patriotism,  of  disregard  for  the  weak- 
ening comforts,  luxuries,  and  fussy  pleasures  that 
absorb  too  much  of  our  vitality;  and  of  disdain 
for  the  material  successes,  which  in  their  selfish 
rivalry,  breed  the  very  industrial  distresses  which 
are  now  our  problems.  At  least  here  is  a  large 
professional  body  whose  aims,  whose  way  of 
living,  and  whose  earnings  prove  that  there  can 
be  a  social  hierarchy  not  dependent  upon  money. 
It  is  one  of  the  finest  lessons  Germany  has  to 
teach,  and  long  may  she  teach  it. 

That  is  distinctly  the  side  of  the  army  that  I 
know  and  approve  without  reserve.  Of  its  value 
as  a  fighting  force  it  would  be  ridiculous,  in  my 
case,  to  write.  I  have  read  and  heard  scores  of 
criticisms  and  comments  from  many  sources,  and 
they  range  from  those  who  claim  that  the  Ger- 
man army  is  unbeatable,  even  if  attacked  from 


454     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

all  sides,  to  those  who  maintain  that  it  is  already 
stale  and  mechanical. 

The  war  of  1866,  when  Prussia  represented 
Germany,  lasted  thirty -five  days;  the  war  against 
Denmark  lasted  six  months  and  twelve  days; 
the  war  against  France  lasted  six  months  and 
nine  days.  Thirty-six  German  cavalry  regi- 
ments did  not  lose  a  man  during  the  whole  cam- 
paign of  1870-1871;  and  the  Sixth  Army  Corps 
was  hardly  under  fire.  There  has  been  no  long, 
practical,  and  therefore  decisive  test  of  the  army. 
Of  the  transport  and  commissary  services  during 
the  French  war,  when  Germany  toward  the  end 
of  it  had  630,000  men  in  the  field,  certainly  we, 
with  the  deplorable  mismanagement  and  scan- 
dal of  our  Spanish  war,  and  the  British  with 
the  investigations  after  the  Egyptian  campaign 
fresh  in  memory,  have  nothing  to  say,  except 
that  it  was  wholly  admirable  and  beyond  the 
breath  of  suspicion  of  greed,  thievery,  or  politi- 
cal chicanery.  There  was  no  rotten  leather,  and 
no  poisoned  beef. 

Officers,  too,  in  the  French  war,  were  called 
upon  to  do  their  duty  and  to  obey,  and  no  indi- 
vidual brilliancy  which  interfered  with  the  gen- 
eral plan  was  condoned  or  pardoned,  no  matter 
how  highly  placed  the  relatives  or  how  influen- 
tial the  connections  of  the  offender.  A  distin- 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  455 

guished  general,  after  a  successful  and  heroic 
victory,  who  had  been  tempted  into  a  bloody 
battle  against  orders,  was  called  before  his  supe- 
riors, told  that  the  first  lesson  the  soldier  had  to 
learn  was  obedience,  and  sent  home!  A  brother 
of  the  chief  of  staff  went  into  the  war  a  captain 
and  came  back  a  captain! 

I  am  wondering  what  our  underpaid,  unno- 
ticed regulars  in  the  army  and  navy  would  have 
to  say,  were  they  free  to  speak,  of  the  conduct 
of  our  last  martial  escapade  with  Spain,  by  our 
press  and  by  our  politicians.  There  would  be 
no  stories  of  the  German  kind,  I  am  sure,  and  no 
single  record  of  an  influential  civilian  who  did 
not  get  all  the  glory  that  he  deserved.  My  im- 
pulsive countrymen  are  always  manufacturing 
heroes  and  saviors,  but  fortunately  the  crosses 
upon  which  they  crucify  them  are  erected  almost 
as  fast  as  the  crowns  are  nicely  fitted  and  com- 
fortable, so  that  there  is  little  danger  of  per- 
manent tyranny.  What  Richelieu  said  of  the 
French  applies  to  some  extent  to  ourselves:  "Le 
propre  du  caractere  frangais  c'est  que,  ne  se 
tenant  pas  fermement  an  bien,  il  ne  s'attache 
non  plus  longtemps  au  mal." 

During  and  after  the  Franco-German  war 
there  was  no  cheap  heroism,  no  feminine  ex- 
citability producing  litters  of  heroes ;  no  slobber- 


456     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ing,  osculatory  advertising;  no  press  undertaking 
the  duties  of  a  general  staff,  which  in  our  Spanish 
war  almost  completely  clouded  the  real  heroism 
and  patriotism  that  were  in  evidence.  There 
were  no  newspaper-made  heroes,  hastening  back 
to  exchange  cheap  military  glory  for  votes  and 
delicious  notoriety.  For  all  of  which,  gentle- 
men, let  us  thank  God,  and  give  praise  where  it 
is  due. 

The  army,  too,  is  an  interesting  commentary 
upon  the  changes  that  are  so  rapidly  taking  place 
in  Germany,  from  an  agricultural  to  a  manu- 
facturing nation.  Of  every  100  recruits  that 
presented  themselves  there  were  passed  as  fit,  in 
1902,  for  the  First  Army  Corps,  of  those  from  the 
country  72.76;  of  those  from  the  towns  63.88; 
in  1910  these  figures  had  fallen  to  67.24  and  53.66. 
In  the  Second  Army  Corps  the  recruits  passed  as 
fit,  from  the  towns,  had  fallen  from  60.74  in  1902 
to  50.42  in  1910.  In  the  Fifth  Army  Corps,  of 
recruits  from  the  towns  the  percentage  of  those 
passed  fell  from  60.07  to  46.13.  In  the  Sixth 
Army  Corps  the  percentage  fell  from  50.14  to 
43.83.  In  the  Sixteenth  Army  Corps  from  67.50 
to  58.80.  In  the  Eighteenth  Army  Corps  the 
recruits  from  the  towns  passed  as  fit  had  fallen 
from  60.46  in  1902  to  46.58  in  1910.  The  aver- 
age for  the  whole  empire,  of  those  from  the  towns 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  457 

passed  as  fit,  had  fallen  from  53.52  in  1902  to 
47.87  in  1910.  The  First  Army  Corps  has  its 
head-quarters  at  Konigsberg,  and  recruits  from 
that  neighborhood;  the  Second  Army  Corps  has 
its  head-quarters  at  Stettin,  and  recruits  from 
Pomerania;  the  Fifth  Army  Corps  has  its  head- 
quarters at  Posen,  and  recruits  from  Posen  and 
Lower  Silesia;  the  Sixth  Army  Corps  has  its 
head-quarters  at  Breslau,  and  recruits  from 
Silesia;  the  Sixteenth  Army  Corps  has  its  head- 
quarters at  Metz,  and  recruits  from  Lorraine; 
the  Eighteenth  Army  Corps  has  its  head-quarters 
at  Frankfurt-am-Main,  and  recruits  from  that 
neighborhood.  These  figures  are  enough  to  make 
my  point,  without  giving  the  statistics  for  all 
the  twenty -three  corps,  which  is,  that  in  spite  of 
the  precautions  taken,  the  German  recruit,  espe- 
cially from  the  towns,  in  whatever  part  of  the 
country,  is  losing  vigor  and  stamina. 

Even  this  hard-and-fast  arrangement  of  a 
bureaucratic  government  with  a  military  back- 
bone does  not  solve  all  the  problems.  When  one 
sees,  however,  the  German  school-boy,  and  the 
German  recruit  during  the  first  weeks  of  his 
training,  in  the  barracks  and  out,  and  I  have 
watched  thousands  of  them,  and  then  looks 
over  this  same  material  after  two  or  three  years 
of  training,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  they  are  the 


458     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

same,  and  that  even  these  hard-working  officers 
have  been  able  to  bring  about  such  a  change. 

Of  the  charges  of  brutality  and  severity  I  only 
know  what  the  statistics  tell  me,  that  in  an  army 
of  over  600,000  men  there  were  some  500  cases 
brought  to  the  notice  of  the  superior  officers  last 
year.  In  1911  there  were  12,919  convictions  for 
crimes  and  misdemeanors  and  578  desertions. 
Of  the  32,711  common  soldiers  in  the  Saxon 
army  in  1911,  30  committed  suicide;  in  1909,  29; 
in  1905,  24;  in  1901,  36;  that  is  to  say,  roughly, 
one  man  per  thousand.  Of  the  why  and  where- 
fore I  cannot  say,  but  Saxony  is  a  peculiarly 
overpopulated  section  of  Germany,  and  the  pop- 
ulation is  overdriven;  and  the  German  every- 
where is  a  dreamy  creature  compared  with  us, 
of  less  toughness  of  fibre  either  morally  or  physi- 
cally, and  no  doubt,  here  and  there,  under-exer- 
cising and  over-thinking  make  the  world  seem 
to  be  a  mad  place  and  impossible  to  live  in. 
Indeed,  it  is  no  place  to  live  in  for  the  best  of 
us  if  we  take  it,  or  ourselves,  too  seriously. 
The  German  army  is  an  educated  army,  as  is 
no  other  army  in  the  world,  and  there  are  the 
diseases  peculiar  to  education  to  combat.  A 
mediocre  ability  to  think,  and  a  limited  intel- 
lectual experience,  coupled  with  a  craving  for 
miscellaneous  reading,  breed  new  microbes  al- 


THE   GERMAN   ARMY  459 

most  as  fast  as  science  discovers  remedies  for  the 
old  ones. 

Bismarck's  words,  "Ohne  Armee  kein  Deutsch- 
land,"  meant  to  him,  and  mean  to-day,  far  more 
than  that  the  army  is  necessary  for  defence.  It 
is  the  best  all-round  democratic  university  in  the 
world ;  it  is  a  necessary  antidote  for  the  physical 
lethargy  of  the  German  race;  it  is  essential  to 
discipline;  it  is  a  cement  for  holding  Germany 
together;  it  gives  a  much-worried  and  many- 
times-beaten  people  confidence;  the  poverty  of 
the  great  bulk  of  its  officers  keeps  the  level  of 
social  expenditure  on  a  sensible  scale;  it  offers 
a  brilliant  example,  in  a  material  age,  of  men 
scorning  ease  for  the  service  of  their  country ;  it 
keeps  the  peace  in  Europe;  and  until  there  is  a 
second  coming,  of  a  Christ  of  pity,  and  patience, 
and  peace,  it  is  as  good  a  substitute  for  that  far- 
off  divine  event  as  puzzled  man  has  to  offer. 

It  is  silly  and  superficial  to  look  upon  the  Ger- 
man army  only  as  a  menace,  only  as  a  cloud  of 
provocations  in  glittering  uniforms,  only  as  a 
helmeted  frown  with  a  turned-up  moustache. 
It  is  not,  and  I  make  no  such  claim  for  it,  an  army 
or  an  officers'  corps  of  Puritans  or  of  self-sacrific- 
ing saints,  but  it  does  partake  of  the  dreamy, 
idealistic  German  nature,  as  does  every  other 
institution  in  Germany.  Though,  as  a  whole, 


400  GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

it  is  a  fighting  machine,  the  various  parts  of  it 
are  not  imbued  with  that  spirit  alone.  The  un- 
easy pessimism  of  the  dreamer,  which  distrusts 
the  comfortable  solutions  of  the  business-like 
politicians,  and  leaders,  in  their  own  and  in  other 
countries,  is  as  noticeable  in  the  army  as  in  all 
other  departments  of  German  life. 

"And  all  through  life  I  see  a  cross, 
Where  sons  of  God  yield  up  their  breath; 
There  is  no  gain  except  by  loss, 
There  is  no  life  except  by  death, 
There  is  no  vision  but  by  faith; 
Nor  glory  but  by  bearing  shame, 
Nor  justice  but  by  taking  blame." 

There  have  oeen  many,  and  there  are  still, 
soldiers  who  hold  that  creed.  There  are  not  a 
few  of  them  in  Germany. 


IX 

GERMAN  PROBLEMS 

A  GREAT  nation  like  Germany  must  have 
characteristics,  anxieties,  problems,  and 
responsibilities,  some  of  which  are  pecul- 
iar to  itself.     The  individual  must  be  of  small 
importance  who  has  not  problems  and  burdens 
of  his  own  arising  from  his  environment,  position, 
work,  and  his  personal  relations  with  other  men; 
as  well  as  problems  of  temper,  temperament, 
health,   education,   and    traditions   peculiar    to 
himself. 

Wise  men  recognize  two  things  about  every 
other  man:  that  he  has  his  own  problems,  and 
that  no  one  else  thoroughly  understands  either 
another  man's  handicaps  or  his  advantages;  and 
that  the  only  way  to  judge  him  is  not  to  go  be- 
hind the  returns,  but  to  note  how  he  lives  with 
these  same  problems.  They  are  there,  there  is 
no  doubt  about  that;  the  question  is,  does  he 
smile  or  scowl?  does  he  work  away  toward  a 
solution,  or  allow  himself  to  be  swamped  by 
them?  do  they  dominate  him,  or  he  them?  has 
he  that  sun  of  life,  vitality,  sufficient  to  burn 

461 


462    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

away  the  fog,  or  does  he  live  and  die  in  a  moist, 
semi-impenetrable  fog,  in  which  he  flounders 
timidly  and  rather  aimlessly  about,  always 
rather  discouraged,  rather  in  the  dark,  and  lam- 
entably damp  in  person  and  in  spirits?  The 
only  fair  test  of  a  man's  life  is  his  living  of  it, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  a  nation. 

Of  Germany's  history,  traditions,  and  tem- 
perament I  have  written.  No  one  can  fail  to 
note  the  chief  characteristics:  their  gregarious- 
ness,  their  melancholic  and  subjective  way  of 
looking  at  life,  their  passion  for  music.  It  is 
more  what  they  think,  than  what  they  do  or 
see,  that  gives  them  pleasure.  They  agree  with 
Erasmus,  that  "it  is  a  foolish  error  to  believe 
that  happiness  is  dependent  upon  things;  it  is 
dependent  entirely  upon  one's  opinion  of  them." 
The  indefinite  has  no  terrors  for  them,  they  de- 
light indeed  in  the  indefinable.  They  have  done 
little  in  great  sculpture  and  architecture,  or  the 
founding  and  ruling  of  colonies,  as  compared 
with  their  supreme  achievements  in  music,  in 
philosophy,  in  lyric  poetry. 

The  art  of  music,  which  moves  one  greatly 
toward  nothing  in  particular;  which  supplies 
sounds  but  not  a  language  for  the  mysteries  of 
feeling;  which  easily  carries  a  sensitive  soul 
away  from  its  sorrows  or  drowns  it  in  tears,  and 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  463 

all  without  offering  a  semblance  of  a  practical 
solution;  which  orchestrates  a  greater  fury,  a 
more  poignant  jealousy,  a  sweeter  note  of  bird, 
a  harsher  clang  of  weapons,  than  any  human 
energy  can  even  imagine  to  exist;  this  art  with 
which  marching  soldiers  sing  away  their  fatigue, 
but  not  really;  with  which  disconsolate  lovers 
wing  their  hopes,  but  not  really;  with  which  the 
pious  pipe  themselves  to  heaven,  but  not  really; 
with  which,  by  strings  and  beaten  skins,  organ- 
pipes  and  blowing  brass,  an  anaesthesia  of  ec- 
stasy is  produced,  leaving  one  only  the  weaker 
against  the  dourness  and  doggedness  of  the  devil; 
with  which  men  and  women  hymn  themselves 
home  to  God,  only  to  lose  Him  when  they  leave 
the  threshold  of  His  house;  which  choruses  from 
a  thousand  throats  patriotism,  defiance,  self- 
confidence,  but  arms  none  of  them  with  any  use- 
ful weapon;  which  with  drums  and  brass  can 
send  any  lout  to  heroism  without  his  knowing 
why;  this  art  which  burns  up  the  manhood  of 
its  devotees  —  who  ever  heard  of  a  great  tenor 
who  was  a  great  man,  or  even  of  a  great  musician 
for  more  than  half  of  whose  life  one  must  needs 
not  apologize?  --  this  art  flourishes  in  Germany 
not  without  reason,  and  not  for  nothing. 

In  a  ragged   school   in   the   neighborhood  of 
Posen   where  the  children   could   hardly  speak 


464     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

German  they  could  sing;  in  a  public  school  in 
Charlottenburg  fifty  boys,  aged  between  eight 
and  fifteen,  sang  the  part-song  known  to  every 
college  man  in  America,  "On  a  Bank  Two  Roses 
Grew,"  as  well  as  a  college  glee  club;  those 
who  know  Bayreuth,  or  have  attended  a  musi- 
cal festival,  or  listened  to  one  of  the  great  clubs 
of  male  voices,  or  heard  the  orchestras  and  mili- 
tary bands,  will  not  deny  the  delights  of  music 
in  Germany.  In  Berlin  there  is  not  a  hall  suit- 
able for  a  musical  recital  that  is  not  engaged  a 
year,  sometimes  more,  in  advance. 

In  the  beautiful  Golden  Hall  of  the  castle  of 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  at 
Schwerin,  I  have  attended  a  concert  given  by 
the  Grand  Duke's  own  orchestra,  where  the  se- 
lections were  all  compositions  of  former  leaders 
or  members  of  the  orchestra,  dating  back  over  a 
period  of  two  hundred  years.  For  centuries  in 
this  particular  grand  duchy  music  and  the  thea- 
tre, supported  and  guided  by  the  sovereign, 
have  offered  a  school  of  entertainment  and  in- 
struction to  the  people.  At  this  present  writ- 
ing, special  trains  are  run  to  Schwerin  from  the 
surrounding  country  districts,  and  the  people 
for  miles  around  subscribe  for  their  seats  for  the 
whole  winter,  and  attend  the  theatre  and  cer- 
tain concerts  as  regularly  as  children  go  to 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  465 

school.  It  sounds  oddly  to  the  ears  of  an  Ameri- 
can to  hear  criticism  to  the  effect,  that  there  are 
more  high-class  music  and  more  classical  plays 
than  the  people  have  either  time  or  money  for. 
Here  is  a  population  which  is  actually  over- 
indulging in  culture.  We  complain  of  too  little; 
here  they  complain  of  too  much.  It  makes  one 
wonder  whether  any  of  the  problems  of  social 
life  are  satisfactorily  soluble;  whether  indeed  it 
be  not  true  that  even  the  virtues  carried  to  an 
extreme  do  not  become  vices.  Philanthropy  in 
more  than  one  city  in  America  is  spending  time, 
money,  and  energy  to  bring  about  this  very 
enthusiasm  for  music  and  the  more  intellectual 
arts  which,  it  is  maintained,  here  in  Schwerin  at 
least,  has  gone  too  far. 

These  problems  are  not  so  easy  of  solution  as 
the  ignorant  and  the  inexperienced  think.  Im- 
agine the  inhabitants  of  Hoboken,  New  Jersey ; 
of  Lynn,  Massachusetts;  of  Kalamazoo,  Mich- 
igan; of  Bloody  Gulch,  Idaho,  spending  too 
much  time  and  money  listening  to  the  music  of 
Palestrina  and  Bach,  or  to  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare; and  yet  what  money  and  energy  would 
not  be  spent  by  certain  enthusiasts  for  the  arts 
did  they  think  such  a  result  possible!  And, 
after  all,  it  might  prove  not  a  blessing,  but  a 
danger. 


466    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Whenever  or  wherever  you  are  in  the  company 
of  Germans  you  notice  their  pleasure  and  their 
keen  interest  in  the  subjective,  rather  than 
in  the  objective  side  of  life.  It  is  from  within 
out  that  they  are  stirred,  not  as  we  are,  by  out- 
side things  working  upon  us.  They  are  still  the 
dreaming,  drinking,  singing,  impulsive  Germans 
of  Tacitus.  Titus  Livius,  Plutarch,  and  Ma- 
chiavelli,  all  maintained  that  the  successive  in- 
vasions of  the  Germans  into  Italy  were  for  the 
sake  of  the  wine  to  be  found  there.  Plutarch 
writes  that  "the  Gauls  were  introduced  to  the 
Italian  wine  by  a  Tuscan  named  Arron,  and  so 
excited  w^ere  they  by  the  desire  for  more  that, 
taking  their  wives  and  children  with  them,  they 
journeyed  across  the  Alps  to  conquer  the  land 
of  such  good  vintages,  looking  upon  other  coun- 
tries as  sterile  and  savage  by  comparison." 
Even  if  this  be  not  history,  it  is  an  impression; 
and  at  any  rate,  from  that  day  to  this  the  Ger- 
mans have  agreed  with  the  dictum  of  Aulus 
Gellius:  "Prandium  autem  abstemium,  in  quo 
nihil  vini  potatur,  canium  dicitur:  quoniam 
canis  vino  caret."  When  the  Roman  historian 
first  came  into  contact  with  them  he  notes,  that 
their  bread  was  lighter  than  other  bread;,  because 
"they  use  the  foam  from  their  beer  as  yeast." 
Tacitus  writes  of  them:  "The  Germans 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  467 

abound  with  rude  strains  of  verse,  the  reciters 
of  which,  in  the  language  of  the  country,  are 
called 'Bards.'" 

I  visited  a  private  stable  in  Bavaria,  as  well 
ordered  and  as  well  kept  as  any  private  stable 
in  America  or  in  England,  and  the  head  coach- 
man was  a  reader  of  poetry;  and  though  he  had 
received  numerous  offers  of  higher  wages  in  the 
city,  declined  them,  giving  as  one  reason  that 
the  view  from  the  window  of  his  room  could  not 
be  equalled  elsewhere!  Where  can  one  find  a 
stable-man  in  our  country  who  reads  Shelley  or 
Edgar  Allan  Poe,  or  who  ever  heard  of  Wil- 
liam James  and  Pragmatism?  I  may  be  doing 
an  injustice  to  the  stable-men  of  Boston,  but  I 
doubt  it. 

There  are  scores  of  pages  of  notes  to  my  hand, 
recounting  similar  if  not  such  startling  examples 
of  the  German  temperament  among  high  and 
low.  Musical,  melancholic,  gregarious,  subjec- 
tive, these  are  their  true  characteristics,  but  the 
superficial  among  us  do  not  see  these  things  be- 
cause they  are  hidden  behind  the  great  army, 
the  new  navy  and  mercantile  marine,  the  fac- 
tories, the  increased  commercial  values,  the 
strenuous  agricultural  and  industrial  pushing 
ahead  of  the  last  thirty  years.  But  they  are 
there,  they  represent  the  German  temperament, 


468     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

they  are  the  internal  character  of  Germania, 
always  to  be  taken  into  account  in  judging  her, 
or  in  wondering  why  she  does  this  or  that,  or 
why  she  does  it  in  this  or  that  way. 

"As  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name." 

This  is  what  the  purely  subjective  mind  is  ever 
doing,  and  when  it  is  carried  too  far  it  is  insan- 
ity. The  individual  no  longer  sees  things  as 
they  are,  but  he  sees  others  and  himself  in 
strange,  horrible,  or  ludicrous  shapes. 

Barring  Japan,  I  suppose  Germany  yields 
more  easily  to  the  temptation  of  the  subjective 
malady  of  suicide  than  any  other  country.  In 
Saxony,  for  example,  the  rate  was  lately  39.2  per 
100,000  of  the  population,  in  England  and  Wales 
7.5.  During  the  five  years  ending  with  1908 
there  were  for  every  100  suicides  among  males  in 
the  United  States  136  in  Germany,  and  for  ev- 
ery 100  suicides  of  females  125  in  Germany.  In 
Vienna,  and  for  racial  purposes  this  is  Germany, 
1,558  persons  killed  themselves  in  1912.  Chil- 
dren committing  suicide  because  they  have  failed 
in  their  examinations  is  not  uncommon  in  Ger- 
many; in  America  and  in  England  the  teachers 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  469 

are  more  likely  to  succumb  than  the  children. 
We  do  not  commit  suicide  in  America  from  any 
sense  of  shame  at  our  intellectual  shortcomings 
-  what  a  decimating  of  the  population  there 
would  be  if  we  did !  —  it  is  more  apt  to  be  caused 
by  ill  health  consequent  upon  a  straining  chase 
for  dollars.  In  Prussia  during  the  five  years, 
1902-1907,  divorce  increased  from  17.7  to  20.8 
per  100,000  inhabitants,  and  suicide  from  20 
to  30.7. 

If  the  observer  does  not  take  this  difference  of 
temperament  into  account,  he  does  not  realize 
how  new  and  strange  it  is  to  find  Germany  these 
days,  making  its  first  and  strongest  impression 
upon  the  outsider  by  its  industrial  progress. 
The  more  intelligent  men  in  Germany  are  be- 
ginning to  see  the  dangers  to  real  progress  in 
such  feverish  devotion  to  industry,  and  to  recog- 
nize that  the  life  of  the  population  is  absorbed 
too  largely  by  science,  finance,  and  commerce. 
To  see  so  much  of  the  intelligence  of  the  nation 
exercising  itself  in  material  researches,  to  see 
such  undue  fervor  in  calculations  of  self-inter- 
est, does  not  leave  an  enlivening  impression. 
Such  an  ideal  of  life  is  paltry  in  itself  and  in- 
volves grave  dangers  in  the  future.  It  is  a  long 
stride  in  the  wrong  direction  since  Hegel  wrote 
of  Germany  as  "the  guardian  of  the  sacred  fire  of 
intellect." 


470     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Out  of  this  temperament  has  grown  the  self- 
consciousness,  the  uneasy  vanity,  the  "touchi- 
ness" which  has  made  Germany  of  late  years 
the  despair  of  the  diplomats  all  over  the  world. 
She  has  become  a  chameleon-like  menace  to 
peace  everywhere  in  the  world.  What  she 
wants,  what  will  offend  her  dignity,  when  she 
will  feel  hurt,  what  amount  of  consideration  will 
suffice,  when  she  will  change  color  to  match  a 
changed  situation,  and  in  what  color  she  will 
choose  to  hide  her  plans  or  to  make  manifest 
her  demands,  no  man  knows.  She  will  not  see 
things  as  they  are,  but  always  as  an  exhalation 
from  her  own  mind.  As  one  of  her  own  poets 
has  written:  "Deutschland  ist  Hamlet." 

At  this  present  moment  she  does  not  see  either 
England  or  America  as  they  are,  quite  peaceably 
disposed  toward  her  but  she  sees  them,  and  per- 
sists in  seeing  them,  as  they  would  be  were  Ger- 
many in  their  place.  She  is  forever  lool^g  into 
a  mirror  instead  of  through  the  open  .window. 
"The  mailed  fist,"  "the  rattling  of  the  sabre," 
"the  friend  in  shining  armor,"  "querelle  alle- 
mande"  are  all  phrases  born  in  Germany  in  the 
last  thirty  years. 

She  even  sees  herself  a  little  out  of  focus,  and 
though  I  admit  her  precarious  position  in  the 
heart  of  Europe,  she  exaggerates  the  necessity 
for  her  autocratic  military  government  to  meet 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  471 

the  situation.  That  philosophical  and  literary 
radical  Lord  Morley,  now  wearing  a  coronet, 
in  the  land  where  logic  is  a  foundling  and  com- 
promise a  darling,  writes:  "A  weak  government 
throws  power  to  something  which  usurps  the 
name  of  public  opinion,  and  public  opinion  as 
expressed  by  the  ventriloquists  of  the  news- 
papers is  at  once  more  capricious  and  more 
vociferous  than  it  ever  was."  This,  strange  to 
say,  is  exactly  the  opinion  of  the  German  auto- 
crats, who  maintain  that  no  democracy  can  be  a 
strong  military  power.  It  remains  for  England, 
and  perhaps  later  America,  to  prove  her  wrong. 
The  sovereign  lady  Germania,  being  of  this 
temper  and  disposition,  of  this  psychological 
make-up,  let  us  look  at  her  dealings  with  cer- 
tain embarrassing  problems  in  her  own  house- 
hold. The  over-stimulation  of  ill-regulated 
mental  activity  as  the  result  of  regimental  edu- 
cation is  one  of  the  minor  problems.  Some  four- 
teen million  dollars  worth  of  cheap  and  nasty 
literature  is  peddled  by  the  agents  of  certain 
publishing  houses,  and  sold  all  over  Germany  to 
those  recently  taught  to  read  but  not  trained  to 
think;  and  this,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  is  still 
a  land  of  low  wages,  of  strict  economies,  and  of 
small  expenditures  on  books.  For  Germany  that 
is  an  enormous  sum  and  represents  a  very  wide- 


472    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

spread  evil.  I  recognize  that  it  is  not  only  in 
Germany,  but  in  France,  England,  and  Amer- 
ica, that  the  ethically  hysterical  have  assumed 
that  modesty  and  health  and  common-sense  are 
characteristics  of  the  intellectually  mediocre. 
That  the  neglect  of  all,  and  the  breaking  of  some, 
of  the  Ten  Commandments  is  essential  to  the 
creation  of  art  or  literature,  or  necessary  to  a 
courageous  freedom  of  living,  is  a  contention 
with  which  I  agree  less  and  less  the  more  I  know 
of  art,  literature,  and  life.  But,  as  I  have  re- 
marked elsewhere  in  this  volume,  the  Strind- 
bergs  and  Wildes  and  Gorkis  are  having  their 
day  in  Germany  just  now,  and  beneath  this 
again  is  this  large  distribution  of  the  lawless  and 
sooty  literature,  frankly  intended  as  a  debauch 
for  the  gutter-snipe  and  his  consort.  Even  the 
coarse,  and  in  no  line  squeamish,  Rabelais  wrote 
that,  "Science  sans  conscience  n'est  que  ruine 
de  Fame." 

There  is  but  a  puny  barrier  against  this,  for 
the  statistical  year-book  of  German  cities  gives 
the  number  of  public  libraries  in  forty-two  cities 
as  179.  Twenty-seven  of  these  cities  gave  an 
annual  support  to  114  of  these  libraries  of  only 
$64,847!  According  to  the  figures  of  Herr 
Ernest  Schultze,  in  1907  the  forty  largest  Ger- 
man cities,  with  a  population  of  11,380,000,  had 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  473 

public  libraries  containing  a  sum  total  of  807,- 
000  volumes.  In  the  year  1906-1907,  5,437,000 
volumes  were  taken  out  and  1,607,476  persons 
frequented  the  public  reading-rooms,  and  in  these 
forty-two  cities  $280,095  were  contributed  from 
private  sources  for  such  library  purposes.  In 
1910  Germany  had  in  some  400  cities,  each  of 
more  than  10,000  inhabitants,  about  650  public 
libraries  and  reading-rooms,  with  together  about 
3,250,000  volumes. 

Berlin  has  thirty  public  libraries  with  231,300 
volumes;  the  number  of  books  taken  out  in  1910 
was  1,655,000.  Hamburg  has  one  public  li- 
brary with  100,000  volumes,  of  which  1,364,000 
were  taken  out.  Breslau  has  7  libraries  and  4 
reading-rooms,  with  75,578  volumes.  Leipzig 
has  7  libraries  and  3  reading-rooms,  with  42,100 
volumes.  Munich  has  6  libraries  and  26,671 
volumes.  Cologne  has  7  libraries  and  6  reading- 
rooms,  with  24,898  volumes. 

The  smallest  library  is  in  the  village  commu- 
nity of  Dudweiler,  in  the  Rhine  province,  which 
contains  132  volumes  for  the  22,000  inhabitants. 

There  were  14,941  books  published  in  Ger- 
many in  1880,  18,875  in  1890,  24,792  in  1900, 
and  31,281  in  1910. 

There  were  13,470  books  published  in  America 
in  1910,  9,209  of  them  by  American  authors. 


474     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

There  were  10,914  books  published  in  Eng- 
land in  1911,  of  which  2,384  were  new  editions. 
Of  this  number  2,215,  wrhich  includes  933  new 
editions  and  40  translations,  were  fiction;  re- 
ligion, 930;  sociology,  725;  science,  650;  geog- 
raphy, 601;  biography,  476;  history,  429;  tech- 
nology, 525.  In  1820,  there  were  only  26  novels 
published  in  England. 

Of  the  31,281  books  published  in  Germany  in 
1910,  4,852  dealt  with  education  and  juvenile  lit- 
erature; 4,134,  belles-lettres;  3,215,  law  and  polit- 
/ical  economy;  2,510,  theology;  2,082,  commerce 
and  industry;  1,981,  medicine;  1,884,  philology 
and  literary  history;  1,480,  geography,  includ- 
ing maps;  667,  military  science  and  equestry; 
1,030,  agriculture  and  forestry;  1,750,  natural 
science  and  mathematics;  1,108,  engineering 
and  construction;  1,254,  history  and  biography; 
981,  art;  and  668  on  philosophy  and  theosophy. 

There  were  some  9,000  writers  of  books  in 
America  in  1910,  or  one  author  in  10,000  of  the 
population,  already  more  than  enough;  there 
were  some  8,000  in  Great  Britain,  or  one  author 
in  about  5,500  of  the  population;  while  in  Ger- 
many there  are  over  31,000  writers,  or  one  author 
in  every  2,097  of  the  population,  including  men, 
women,  and  children  of  all  ages,  an  unreason- 
able and  disastrous  proportion.  If  we  estimate 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  475 

the  number  of  adult  males  of  Germany  at  14,000,- 
000,  the  number  who  voted  at  the  last  election, 
then  there  was  one  author  to  every  450,  a  most 
unhealthy  proportion,  and  bearing  out  exactly 
what  has  been  said  of  the  German  temperament 
and  constitutional  bias.  Furthermore,  this  ac- 
counts for  the  fact  that  Germany  imports  some 
700,000  agricultural  laborers  each  year  to  garner 
the  food  harvests,  for  which  she  has  not  sufficient 
recruits,  and  who,  by  the  way,  take  out  of  the 
country  each  year  some  $35,000,000  in  wages. 
Twenty  per  cent,  of  the  miners  in  Westphalia 
are  foreigners,  eight  per  cent,  of  them  Italians, 
and  there  are  nearly  half  a  million  foreigners 
employed  as  common  laborers  in  the  various  in- 
dustries of  Germany. 

Wherever  one  travels  now  in  the  world,  he 
finds  that  most  courageous  and  self-sacrificing 
of  all  the  pioneers,  the  missionary:  American, 
British,  French,  Italian.  The  best  of  them,  on 
the  plains  of  North  America,  in  the  destructive 
climate  of  India,  in  China,  in  all  the  islands  of  all 
the  seas,  are,  whatever  their  creed,  soldiers  of 
whom  we  are  all  proud;  for  they  fight  not  only 
against  the  overwhelming  prejudice  of  those 
whom  they  seek  to  save,  but  against  the  wide- 
spread prejudice  of  their  own  people,  and  against 
the  well-founded  suspicion  and  contempt  aroused 


476     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

by  their  own  black  sheep.  I  have  found  them, 
here  a  Jesuit,  there  a  Presbyterian,  winning  my 
friendship  and  my  admiration,  despite  funda- 
mental differences  of  belief  about  many  things. 
There  are  few  Germans  among  them!  Even 
in  this  field  Germany  produces  theological 
controversialists  whom  we  have  all  studied, 
orthodox  and  destructive,  but  few  pioneers, 
and  practically  no  Augustines  or  Loyolas,  Wes- 
leys  or  Booths,  Livingstones  or  Stanleys.  Co- 
lumba,  an  Irish  refugee,  founded  on  the  island 
of  lona,  off  the  west  coast  of  Scotland,  a 
mission  station,  whence  went  missionaries  and 
preachers  to  the  conversion  not  only  of  England, 
but  of  the  tribes  of  Germany.  It  was  only  in 
the  sixth  century  that  the  Franks,  only  in  the 
ninth  century  that  the  Saxons,  and  only  in  the 
tenth  century  that  the  Danes  became  Christians. 

Neither  at  home  nor  abroad  are  her  successes 
those  which  deal  with  men  by  winning  their 
allegiance,  their  submission,  their  loyalty,  or 
their  respectful  regard.  She  is  pre-eminent  in 
the  things  of  the  mind,  in  subjective  matters, 
and  in  her  regimental  dealings  with,  and  ar- 
rangements for,  the  inanimate  side  of  life. 

As  an  example  on  the  credit  side  of  her  govern- 
ing is  the  very  complete  and  successful  system 
of  land-banks,  introduced  by  Frederick  the 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  477 

Great  and  since  modelled  somewhat  upon  the 
French  methods,  which  have  protected  the 
farmer  from  usury,  insured  him  money  at  low 
rates  for  improvements,  for  the  purchase  of  tools, 
cattle,  and  fertilizers,  and  enabled  him  to  do,  by 
sensible  co-operation,  what  would  have  been  im- 
possible for  him  as  an  individual.  So  successful 
has  been  this  co-operation  between  the  banks 
and  the  united  farming  communities  that  it 
were  well  worth  a  chapter  of  description  were 
it  not  that,  through  the  initiative  of  President 
Taft  and  the  able  and  industrious  assistance  of 
our  officials  in  Europe,  among  whom  our  am- 
bassador in  Paris,  Mr.  Herrick,  may  be  men- 
tioned as  untiring,  there  will  shortly  appear  a 
complete  exposition  and  explanation  of  the 
scheme,  available  for  those  of  my  countrymen 
interested  in  the  matter.  Or  if  they  will  journey 
to  Ireland  they  may  see  there  what  Sir  Horace 
Plunkett  has  done  to  revolutionize,  and  against 
tremendous  odds,  agriculture.  And,  be  it  noted, 
it  has  been  done,  with  emphatic  warnings 
against  the  modern  fallacy  of  leaning  upon  state 
aid.  It  is  estimated  that  our  farmers  would 
be  saved  between  $20,000,000  and  $40,000,- 
000  a  year  in  interest  alone  were  we  to  adopt 
similar  methods  of  loaning  to  the  land-owners. 
The  Preussische  Centralgenossenschaftskasse.  or 


478     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Central  Bank  of  Co-operative  Associations,  has 
revolutionized,  one  may  here  use  the  word  with- 
out exaggeration,  agricultural  methods,  through- 
out Prussia  and  Germany. 

In  Kansas,  Missouri,  and  Iowa  there  are 
5,000,000  acres  of  land  in  wheat,  which  is  prac- 
tically the  size  of  Germany's  wheat  acreage,  but 
Germany  produces  140,000,000  bushels  of  wheat 
off  her  parcel  of  land;  while  the  wheat  raised 

^  the  same  area  in  these  three  States  is  only 
55,000,000  bushels. 

France  and  Minnesota  each  plant  16,000,000 
acres  in  wheat,  but  France  produces  324,000,000 
bushels  and  Minnesota  188,000,000  bushels.  In 
round  numbers  we  support  90,000,000  people 
on  3,000,000  square  miles  of  land,  and  we  could 
support  150  per  square  mile  just  as  easily  as  30, 
and  even  then  there  would  be  not  even  a  frac- 
tion of  the  density  of  population  of  Denmark, 
178;  the  Netherlands,  470;  France,  189;  Saxony, 
830;  England  and  Wales,  405.6.  The  average 
wheat  yield  of  our  country  is  about  14  bushels 
per  acre  in  good  years,  it  might  just  as  well 
be  25;  the  average  cotton  yield  is  about  four- 
tenths  of  a  bale  per  acre,  and  four  times  that 
amount  could  be  raised  as  easily. 

In  1900,  10,500,000  people  were  engaged  in 
agriculture  in  America,  or  35.7  per  cent,  of  the 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  479 

population;  as  over  against  37.7  in  1890  and 
44.3  in  1880.  Of  these  10,500,000,  5,700,000 
were  owners,  renters,  or  overseers,  or  56  per 
cent.,  and  only  4,500,000  were  actual  farm  la- 
borers; and  more  than  half  of  these,  or  2,350,000, 
were  members  of  the  family,  leaving  only  some 
2,000,000  actual  agricultural  wage-earners,  or 
employable  agricultural  laborers.  Five-eighths 
of  these  were  under  twenty-five  years  of  age, 
and  of  the  white  regular  workers  only  one-tenth 
were  over  thirty-five  years  of  age.  This  shows 
how  unstable  is  the  foundation  of  our  agricult- 
ural prosperity,  the  chief  asset  of  plenty  and 
contentment  of  our  country.  Mr.  Get-Rich- 
Quick  has  moved  on  to  the  shifting  and  more 
exciting  opportunities  of  the  cities,  where  poor 
human  nature,  aided  and  abetted  by  weak  phi- 
lanthropy, and  demagogic  fishing  for  votes  by 
eleemosynary  legislation,  provides  him  with  a 
mild  form  of  riotous  living,  and  a  fatted  calf  of 
doles  in  case  of  accident,  sickness,  penury,  or 
old  age. 

In  our  American  cities  of  over  8,000  inhabi- 
tants the  increase  in  population  from  1790  to 
1 900  has  been  from  3.4  per  cent,  to  33  per  cent. 
In  cities  of  2,500  and  over  the  increase  from 
1880  to  1900  has  been  from  29.3  per  cent,  to 
40.2  per  cent.  In  the  State  of  New  York  the 
farming  population  is  smaller  than  ever  before, 


480     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  in  parts  of  New  England  it  is  smaller  than 
one  hundred  years  ago.  In  1909  there  were 
15,000  deserted  farms  with  a  total  of  1,130,000 
acres.  The  average  size  of  farms  in  the  United 
States  in  1850  was  212  acres;  in  1890,  121  acres. 
Wages  in  the  reaping  season  on  fruit,  grain,  and 
cotton  farms  are  enormous,  running  to  four  and 
five  dollars  a  day.  We  are  behind  every  coun- 
try in  Europe  except  Russia,  in  our  agricultural 
methods.  Some  day  the  American  people  will 
discover,  may  it  not  be  too  late,  that  the  tall 
talk  and  highfalutin  boastings  of  the  politicians 
and  alien  journalists  in  their  midst  do  nothing 
to  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  one  grew 
before. 

Germany  may  not  have  solved  this  problem, 
indeed  no  nation  which  offers  undue  legislative 
alleviation  for  human  frailty  will  ever  solve  it, 
but  at  least  she  has  not  shirked  the  problem, 
and  presents  for  our  enlightenment  a  scheme  in 
full  and  smooth  working  order. 

In  dealing  with  German  problems  it  is  fair 
to  give  examples  where  her  methods  have  been 
wholly  and  entirely  successful.  The  man  who 
does  not  know  one  tree  or  shrub  from  another 
cannot  travel  in  trains,  motor-cars,  or  afoot 
without  remarking  the  neatness,  symmetry,  and 
the  flourishing  condition  of  the  forests.  In 
these  matters  Germany  so  far  surpasses  us  that 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  481 

we  may  be  said  to  be  merely  in  a  kindergarten 
stage  of  development.  As  early  as  1783  a  Ger- 
man traveller,  Johann  David  Schoepf,  was  dis- 
tressed to  see  the  waste  of  valuable  wood  in 
America.  He  tells  of  a  furnace  in  New  Jersey 
which  exhausted  a  forest  of  nearly  20,000  acres 
in  twelve  to  fifteen  years,  and  goes  on  to  proph- 
esy the  grave  danger  to  America  unless  coal  is 
discovered  and  used  instead  of  wood. 

The  public  forests  in  America  contain  about 
nine  per  cent,  of  the  total  land  area  and  about 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  forest  area  of  the 
country.  In  Germany  the  state  owns  about 
40  per  cent,  of  the  forests,  and  nearly  70  per  cent, 
of  the  forest  area  is  under  state  control.  The 
total  forest  area  of  the  empire  is  34,569,800 
acres,  and  two-thirds  bear  pine,  larch,  and  red 
and  white  fir.  In  a  recent  year  the  Federal 
States  made  a  net  profit  of  $38,250,000  from 
public  lands  and  forests,  and  the  entire  profit 
from  the  German  forests  was  estimated  at  $110,- 
000,000.  When  one  remembers  that  Germany 
is  less  than  the  size  of  Texas,  and  that  from  her 
forests  alone,  in  one  year,  she  received  an  income 
equal  to  more  than  one-tenth  of  our  total  na- 
tional expenditure  for  that  same  year,  the  fact 
of  our  childish  wastefulness  is  brought  home  to 
us,  and  makes  a  patriot  feel  that  a  Gifford 
Plnohot  should  be  given  a  free  hand,  I  can 


482    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

only  write  of  the  subject  as  one  technically 
entirely  ignorant,  but  that  Germany  is  a  uni- 
versity of  forestry  is  not  only  attested  by  the 
demand  for  her  teachers  in  India,  and  in  Amer- 
ica, and  elsewhere  in  the  world,  but  by  the  con- 
dition of  the  forests  themselves  all  over  Ger- 
many, which  no  traveller,  from  America  at  any 
rate,  can  fail  to  notice  without  surprise  and 
delight. 

Germany,  like  the  rest  of  us,  has  been  obliged 
to  face  the  various  social  problems  that  arise 
from  original  sin,  but  which  vote-getters  are 
pleased  to  ascribe  to  industrial  progress.  In 
our  country,  with  a  population  of  some  thirty 
to  the  square  mile,  while  in  the  kingdom  of 
Saxony  the  density  of  the  population  is  830.6  to 
the  square  mile,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  we 
suffer  from  overcrowding  so  much  as  from  over- 
indulgence, wastefulness,  and  fussy  legislation. 
None  the  less,  we  have  42  institutions  for  the 
feeble-minded,  115  schools  and  homes  for  the 
deaf  and  blind,  350  hospitals  for  the  insane, 
1,200  refuge  houses,  1,300  prisons,  1,500  hos- 
pitals, and  2,500  almshouses.  We  have  2,000,- 
000  annually  who  are  cared  for  in  homes  and 
hospitals,  300,000  insane  and  feeble-minded, 
160,000  blind  or  deaf,  80,000  prisoners,  and  100,- 
000  paupers  in  almshouses  and  out,  and  we 
spend  each  year  about  $100,000,000  in  taking 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  483 

care  of  them.  We  are  as  wasteful  and  careless 
in  these  matters  as  we  have  been  until  very 
lately  in  our  forestry  methods. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  empire  Germany 
undertook  to  deal  with  these  social  problems. 
The  German  Empire  took  over  some  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  socialism,  but  retained,  and  retains  ab- 
solutely, the  power  of  applying  those  principles. 
Bismarck  himself  admitted  that  his  advocacy  of 
the  industrial  insurance  laws  was  selfish.  "My 
idea  was  to  bribe  the  working  classes,  or  shall  I 
say  to  win  them  over,  to  regard  the  state  as  a 
social  institution  existing  for  their  sake  and  in- 
terested in  their  welfare."  Whatever  else  may 
have  resulted,  discontent,  whether  well-founded 
or  not,  is  not  now  under  discussion,  has  not  been 
lessened.  In  1912  more  than  one-half  of  the 
electors  voted  "discontented"  as  over  against 
the  less  than  one-half  who  voted  "contented." 
The  mass  of  the  people  may  be  better  clothed, 
better  fed,  better  housed,  better  cared  for  in 
sickness  and  in  old  age,  than  formerly,  but  they 
are  not  satisfied.  No  state  can  go  much  fur- 
ther than  Germany  has  gone  along  the  lines  of 
state  interference,  guidance,  and  control  of  the 
personal  affairs  of  its  people,  and  nothing  is  more 
surprising  about  the  whole  matter  than  the  gen- 
eral acceptance  in  America  and  in  England  of 
such  legislation  as  having  proved  altogether 


484     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

successful.  I  doubt  if  any  intelligent  German 
considers  these  various  pension  schemes  as  alto- 
gether successful.  I  can  vouch  for  it  that  many 
German  statesmen  make  no  such  claims  in  pri- 
vate, whatever  they  may  say  in  public. 

Some  of  the  barren  figures,  needing  no  com- 
ment, are  of  interest  in  this  connection.  The 
cost  of  insurance  in  Germany  has  risen  to  over 
$500,000  a  day,  the  total  cost  of  state  insurance 
exceeding  $250,000,000  a  year  at  the  present 
time,  a  fairly  heavy  tax  upon  small  employers. 
In  1909,  of  422,076  decisions  by  the  industrial 
unions,  76,352  were  appealed  against,  and  of  the 
100,000  arbitration  judgments,  22,794  were  ap- 
pealed against.  So  difficult  is  it  to  settle  to 
the  claimant's  satisfaction  the  amount  of  salve 
necessary  for  his  particular  wound  when,  as  is 
true  in  these  cases,  the  salve  is  a  grant  of  money 
for  a  longer  or  shorter  period! 

In  1886  there  were,  roughly,  100,000  accidents 
reported  and  10,000  compensated,  but  as  they 
became  more  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
game,  the  figures  rose  in  1908  to  662,321  acci- 
dents and  142,965  compensations. 

The  vast  increase  of  the  claims  for  trifling 
injuries  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  twenty 
years  from  1888  to  1908,  despite  the  increase  of 
the  total  compensation  from  $-1,475,000  to  $38,- 
715,000,  the  average  compensation  per  accident 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  485 

fell  from  $58.50  to  $38.83.  In  the  two  years  1907 
to  1909  the  number  of  members  of  those  state- 
insured  increased  by  380,819,  while  the  days 
of  sickness  increased  by  26,219,632!  The  cost  of 
sickness  insurance  alone  rose  from  $42,895,000 
in  1900  to  $83,640,000  in  1909.  The  Workmen's 
Compensation  Act  in  England  costs,  for  man- 
agement, commission,  legal  and  medical  fees, 
$20,000,000  a  year,  while  the  compensation  paid 
out  was  $13,500,000.  The  insurance  companies 
calculate  that  for  every  $500  of  compensation, 
the  employers  have  paid  $750! 

It  is  becoming  increasingly  evident  that  the 
logical  result  of  state  charity,  or  call  it  state 
insurance  to  avoid  controversy,  over  a  large 
field,  and  including  millions  of  beneficiaries  and 
claimants,  is  that  the  army  of  officials,  the 
expenses  of  administration,  and  the  payments 
themselves  must  sooner  or  later  break  the  back 
of  the  state  morally,  politically,  and  financially. 
It  rapidly  increases  parasitism  among  the  re- 
ceivers; makes  a  powerful  though  indifferent 
army  of  state  servants  of  the  distributers;  and 
loses  financially  to  the  state  far  more  in  expense 
of  administration,  and  loss  of  useful  labor  of 
the  army  of  civil  servants,  than  it  gains  by  the 
loss  to  the  state  of  individual  incapacity  re- 
sulting in  pauperism  and  invalidism,  which 
must  be  cared  for.  To  put  it  briefly,  it  is  far 


486     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

more  dangerous  to  the  state  to  tell  the  individ- 
ual that  he  shall  be  taken  care  of  than  to  tell 
him  that  he  must  shift  for  himself.  As  for  the 
effect  upon  the  individual,  it  is  a  lowering  medi- 
cine, making  the  patient  gradually  dependent 
upon  the  drug,  and  bringing  him  finally  to  the 
incurable  invalidism  of  surly  apathy.  To  change 
Patrick  Henry's  fiery  peroration  slightly:  Give 
me  liberty  or  in  the  end  you  give  me  moral  and 
political  death. 

Students  of  the  various  forms  of  this  modern 
political  nostrum,  of  getting  rid  of  the  fools  who 
are  rich  by  deceiving  the  fools  who  are  poor,  will 
remember  the  decree  of  the  Provisional  Govern- 
ment of  the  French  Republic  in  1848:  "This 
Government  undertakes  to  guarantee  the  exist- 
ence of  the  workman  by  work.  It  undertakes 
to  guarantee  work  to  every  citizen."  On 
March  9  public  works  were  started  and  3,000 
men  employed.  March  15  saw  14,000  on  the 
pay-rolls,  most  of  them  unoccupied  because  there 
was  no  suitable  work.  Those  not  working  re- 
ceived "inactivity  pay"  of  a  franc  a  day.  The 
end  of  April  saw  100,000  on  the  pay-rolls.  In 
May  a  minister  ventured  to  suggest  that  it  was 
the  workman's  duty  to  work!  There  were  mur- 
murs of  disapproval,  but  the  public  treasury 
was  nearing  bankruptcy,  and  on  June  22  an 
order  was  promulgated,  that  all  of  these  work 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  487 

men  between  the  ages  of  seventeen  and  twenty- 
five  were  to  enlist  in  the  army.  An  insurrec- 
tion followed  this  order  that  workmen  should 
work,  and  3,000  citizens  were  shot  down  in  the 
streets,  and  another  3,000  were  sent  to  penal 
colonies  in  Algeria.  The  French  are  a  logical 
people.  The  state  promised  suitable  work;  that 
always  means,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
worker,  agreeable  work,  and  not  too  fatiguing  at 
that.  Of  course,  no  such  thing  is  possible,  and 
the  end  was  riot,  murder,  and  penal  servitude. 
The  state  can  no  more  provide  suitable  and 
agreeable  methods  of  livelihood  for  its  citizens, 
than  it  can  provide  them  with  a  duty-loving, 
unenvious,  and  honest  disposition.  As  I  have 
remarked  elsewhere,  the  only  thing  that  stands 
between  state  socialism  and  the  instant  solution 
of  all  our  social  problems  is  human  nature! 
This  mongrel  demand  for  an  artificial  equality, 
is  worse,  because  more  degrading  than  any 
tyranny  of  church  or  state  even.  Every  man 
wants  superiority  and  distinction  for  himself, 
he  only  wants  equality,  invisibility,  and  inarticu- 
lateness for  others. 

When  some  such  system  as  this  is  put  to  work 
in  Ireland,  I  shall  envy  every  physician  in  Ire- 
land, for  he  will  live  in  a  joyous  round  of  farces 
such  as  the  world  has  never  provided  before  for 
the  lovers  of  the  humorous.  Already  Ireland, 


488    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

with  only  701,620  electors,  out  of  a  total  of 
8,058,025  in  the  United  Kingdom,  is  represented 
in  the  House  of  Commons  by  103  members  out 
of  the  total  of  670;  and  out  of  the  935,000  old- 
age  pensioners  on  the  lists  at  the  beginning  of 
1912,  Ireland  had  202,810,  and  was  drawing 
$12,943,000  out  of  the  total  paid  of  $59,445,500, 
while  the  total  population  of  Ireland  was  4,368,- 
599,  and  of  the  rest  of  the  United  Kingdom 
40,533,557 !  Further,  as  an  example  of  the  slight 
value  of  education  in  the  game  of  politics,  out 
of  the  41,710  illiterate  voters  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  Ireland  has  22,515.  Long  life  to  Ire- 
land for  her  gallant  attack  upon  humbuggery 
with  humbuggery!  And  this  is,  too,  the  little 
island  that  sent  the  Wellesleys,  the  Pallisers, 
the  Moores,  the  Eyres,  the  Cootes,  the  Xapiers, 
the  Wolseleys,  and  Roberts  to  fight  England's 
battles,  and  half  the  officers  and  privates  who 
conquered  India ;  which  in  the  Seven  Years'  War 
furnished  Austria  with  her  best  generals  (Brown, 
Lacy,  O'Donnell),  and  whose  exiles,  called  the 
'  Wild  Geese,"  flocked  to  the  standard  of  Wash- 
ington in  1776.  This  is  proof  positive  that  they 
are  not  naturally  a  parasitic  race. 

Even  in  Germany,  where  there  is  not  a  tithe 
of  the  impish  humour  that  exists  in  Ireland,  the 
Socialists  have  so  misused  the  immense  bureau- 
cracy that  must  carry  on  the  mere  clerical  work 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  489 

of  insurance,  that  a  new  law  passed  the  Reichs- 
tag in  June,  1911,  containing  several  hundred 
amendments.  Employers  must  now  pay  one- 
half  instead  of  one-third  of  the  sickness  insurance 
premiums,  which  gives  them  one-half  instead 
of  one-third  of  the  management  authority. 

The  management  had  degenerated  into  a  mere 
game  of  politics,  with  the  Socialists  in  such  dis- 
proportionate control  that  they  were  rapidly 
turning  the  insurance  machinery  into  at  well- 
organized  body  for  the  exploitation  of  their  own 
political  doctrines;  and  the  employer  and  the 
state  were  helpless.  It  is,  therefore,  amusing 
to  the  man  on  the  spot  to  find  certain  English 
writers  offering  as  proof  of  the  success  of  the 
insurance  laws  the  fact  that  the  Socialists,  who 
once  opposed,  are  now  satisfied  with  them.  Of 
course  they  are  satisfied  with  them.  They  have 
had  a  war-chest  and  weapons  put  into  their 
hands  such  as  they  have  never  had  before.  Nor 
have  these  detailed  parchment  solutions  of  so- 
cial questions  done  away  with  all  the  tramps, 
poor,  sick,  and  destitute.  Over  a  million  per- 
sons passed  through  the  municipal  night  shel- 
ters in  Berlin  during  the  last  year;  and  there 
are  still  admittedly  some  5,000  tramps  in  Ger- 
many. The  vicious  circle  is  in  evidence  in  Ger- 
many as  elsewhere.  It  might  be  possible  to 


490    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

regulate  men's  earning  power  by  legislation,  but 
even  when  this  colossal  task  is  done,  there  must 
follow  the  regulation  of  the  spending  power  to 
make  it  complete.  What  conceivable  legislative 
regulation  can  efface  the  difference  between 
what  A,  B,  and  C  will  get  out  of  five  dollars  once 
they  have  them!  That  is  the  real  problem,  but 
no  one  proposes  a  solution  of  it.  A  will  use  his 
five  dollars  to  make  him  more  powerful,  B  will 
use  his  in  dissipation,  and  C  will  lose  his.  How 
is  that  to  be  regulated?  And  without  that  regu- 
lation you  will  have  rich  men  and  tramps  all 
over  again. 

In  urban  and  rural  districts  containing  over 
10,000  inhabitants,  some  $40,000,000  was  ex- 
pended for  sick  and  poor  relief,  and  this  does 
not  include  the  hundreds  of  districts  with  fewer 
than  10,000  inhabitants  for  which  there  are  no 
figures.  Even  the  wholly  admirable  Elberfeld 
system  of  charity,  known  all  over  the  world  to 
charity-workers,  which  is,  briefly,  investigation 
of  cases  by  voluntary  workers  personally  and 
privately,  and  each  dealing  with  a  small  num- 
ber, has  not  solved  the  problem.  There  were 
1,537  strikes  in  Germany  in  1909,  and  2,109  in 
1910.  In  1910,  8,269  industrial  plants  were  af- 
fected, in  which  372,119  persons  were  employed, 
and  2,209  plants  were  obliged  to  shut  down 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  491 

entirely.  There  were  as  many  as  154,093  persons 
on  strike  at  the  same  time.  In  1910  there  were 
also  1,121  lock-outs,  affecting  10,381  plants  and 
314,988  persons. 

Here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  German  people,  one  must  look 
deeper  than  the  average  traveller  has  the  time 
or  the  necessary  experience  back  of  him  to  do, 
in  order  to  see  and  to  sift  the  facts.  Scores  of 
travellers  have  told  me:  "I  have  never  seen  a 
tramp,  a  beggar,  a  drunken  man  in  Germany." 
I  can  only  reply  that  I  have  seen  tramps  at 
large,  and  colonies  of  them  besides;  that  I  have 
seen  hundreds  of  the  poverty-stricken  and  dis- 
eased; that  there  are  more  than  thirty  drunkards' 
homes  in  Germany;  and  that  between  1879  and 
1901  the  number  of  persons  under  treatment  for 
alcoholism  had  increased  from  12,000  to  65,000, 
an  increase  of  500  per  cent.;  the  cases  of  heart 
disease  and  rheumatism  increased  by  600  per 
cent.;  while  the  total  population  had  increased 
33  per  cent.  There  are  125,000  patients  ad- 
mitted to  the  public  and  private  lunatic  asy- 
lums of  Germany,  and  there  are  accommoda- 
tions in  public  and  private  hospitals  for  1,300,000 
in-patients  passing  through  them  in  the  year; 
in  1909,  544,183  persons  were  tried  before  the 
courts  of  first  instance  and  convicted,  of  whom 


492    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

49,697  were  between  twelve  and  eighteen  years 
of  age;  and  in  the  same  year  there  were  183,700 
illegitimate  births  and  14,225  suicides,  or  22.3 
per  100,000  of  the  population.  The  poor  law 
authorities  state  that  the  cost  to  the  empire  of 
alcoholism  in  all  its  forms  of  poverty,  crime,  and 
disease  amounts  to  some  $13,000,000  a  year.  In 
1910  Germany  consumed  1,704  million  gallons 
of  malt  liquors,  the  United  States,  1,851  million 
gallons;  of  beer  we  consumed  20.09  gallons  and 
Germany  26.47  gallons  per  capita.  Germany's 
drink  bill  even  ten  years  ago  was  $560,000,000 
for  beer,  $140,000,000  for  spirits,  and  $125,- 
000,000  for  wine.  There  is  a  wine,  beer,  or 
spirit  dealer  in  Berlin  for  every  157  of  the  in- 
habitants, men,  women,  and  children.  It  has 
always  been  the  avowed  policy  of  autocracies 
to  atone  for  the  lack  of  political  freedom  by  lax 
regulations  in  regard  to  moral  matters.  The 
citizen  is  imprisoned  for  insulting  the  state,  but 
he  may  insult  his  own  person  by  dissipation  up 
to  any  limit,  this  side  of  disorderliness  in  public. 
Drinking,  gambling,  and  other  forms  of  vice  are 
provided  for  the  citizens  of  Berlin  comfortably 
and,  comparatively  speaking,  cheaply.  Lotter- 
ies are  sanctioned  by  all  the  states,  and  they  use 
this  incentive  to  the  worst  form  of  gambling 
for  all  sorts  of  purposes,  from  repairing  churches 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  493 

to  building  patriotic  monuments,  and  replenish- 
ing the  treasury. 

This  is  by  no  means  an  attack  upon  Germany 
or  upon  German  methods  in  these  matters; 
probably  both  in  America  and  in  England  we 
are  worse  off  in  these  respects  than  are  they,  but 
unprejudiced  people  will  agree  that  it  is  high 
time  to  learn  that  not  even  German  methods 
have  solved  these  complicated  and  heatedly 
argued  questions  of  social  reform.  Germany, 
due  to  its  compactness  and  well-drilled  and  sub- 
servient population,  should  succeed  if  any  na- 
tion can,  for  social  legislation  has  never  been 
in  stronger  or  wiser  hands  or  more  admirably 
and  honestly  administered.  In  America  such 
opportunities  offered  to  the  on-politics-living  big 
and  little  bosses  would  lead  swiftly  to  anarchy. 
We  have  laws  enough  now,  but  the  baser  poli- 
ticians protect  our  city  tramps,  our  gunmen,  our 
decadents,  our  incendiaries  against  our  elected 
magistrates,  in  order  that  they  may  keep  ready 
to  hand,  and  increase,  the  raw  material  of  a  pur- 
chasable vote,  by  the  domination  and  protection 
of  which  they  keep  themselves  in  power.  That 
is  the  whole  secret  of  our  municipal  misgovern- 
ment  wherever  it  exists,  and  also  the  reason  for 
our  barbarous  crimes.  We  have  a  cowed  mag- 
istracy seeking  re-election  from  the  manipulat- 
ors of  the  purchasable  voters. 


The  truth  is  that  the  Sacculina  method  of 
social  reform  is  nowhere  a  success,  certainly  not 
in  Germany.  The  Sacculina  is  a  crustacean. 
It  attaches  itself  in  the  form  of  a  simple  sac  to 
the  crab,  into  which  its  blood-vessels  extend.  It 
loses  its  power  of  locomotion  and  its  limbs  dis- 
appear. It  lives  at  the  expense  of  the  crab; 
activity  is  not  necessary,  and  it  becomes  the 
highest  type  of  parasite,  with  no  organs  except 
ovaries  and  blood-vessels.  It  can  propagate, 
but  has  lost  all  power  or  desire  to  do  anything 
else.  We  have  succeeded  in  producing  no  small 
number  of  people  of  the  Sacculina  type  by  play- 
ing social  and  political  crab  for  them,  and  we 
are  on  the  way  to  produce  more,  until  the  crab 
is  exhausted  and  the  Sacculina  is  shaken  into 
the  water  to  sink  or  swim  for  himself.  "Char- 
ity causes  half  the  suffering  she  relieves,  but 
she  can  never  relieve  half  the  suffering  she 
causes." 

Compulsory  insurance  was  tried  in  the  prac- 
tical and  economical  Swiss  city  of  Basle  and 
given  up,  because  it  was  found  that  each  year  it 
was  the  same  small  class  who  reaped  the  benefit 
of  the  insurance.  The  crab  gained  nothing  and 
the  Sacculina  became  rapidly  impotent.  Basle, 
if  I  mistake  not,  will  have  imitators,  inclined  to 
the  philosophy  of  Frederick  the  Great,  who  was 
surely  no  enemy  to  rational  progress,  but  who 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  495 

once  said:  "Depuis  bien  longtemps  je  suis  con- 
vaincu  qu'un  mal  qui  reste  vaut  mieux  qu'un 
bien  qui  change." 

A  good  deal  of  modern  legislation  is  due  to 
fatigue,  and  some  of  the  rest  to  ill-founded  ap- 
prehension, that  unless  there  is  a  change  of  some 
kind  the  masters  of  the  legislators  will  dis- 
charge them,  because  they  do  not  furnish  enough 
novelties.  In  the  meantime  nobody  is  bold 
enough  to  proclaim  to  the  restless  ones,  seeking 
ever  some  new  thing,  that  there  is  nothing  orig- 
inal except  what  has  been  forgotten.  The  orig- 
inality of  such  students  of  history,  and  panderers 
to  majorities,  as  the  leaders  of  the  discontented 
in  England,  Germany  and  in  America,  dates 
back  to  about  the  time  of  the  fall  of  Pericles  and 
the  Athenian  republic. 

The  cry  of  "discontent"  has  become  a  fe- 
tich among  unthinking  politicians.  We  are  all, 
thank  God,  discontented,  and  a  poor  lot  we 
should  be  if  we  were  not.  The  workingman's 
discontent  has  been  over-emphasized,  for  the 
reason  that  what  he  demands  is  material,  pon- 
derable, for  sale,  easy  to  see,  and  not  far  out  of 
the  reach  of  one's  hand.  He  wants  more  rooms, 
more  meat,  more  tobacco,  more  beer,  more  lei- 
sure. I  am  glad  he  does  want  them,  and  let  me 
say  just  once,  in  answer  to  my  detractors  along 


496    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

these  lines,  that  the  workingman  has  no  heartier 
champion  than  am  I.  I  applaud  his  discontent 
just  as  I  cherish  my  own,  for  "it  is  precisely  this 
that  keeps  us  all  alive!"  It  is  just  because  I 
wish  him  well  that  every  ounce  of  my  influence 
and  experience  are  his,  to  open  his  eyes  to  the 
demagogues  who  fatten  upon  him,  fool  him, 
rope  him,  throw  him  and  brand  him,  as  they 
have  done  in  Germany,  as  they  are  attempting 
to  do  in  England,  and  as  they  will  shortly  begin 
to  do  in  America.  State  socialism  means  slavery 
for  him,  with  an  army  of  officials  living  on  him. 
He  will  be  given  so  much  bread,  and  beer,  and 
meat,  and  tobacco;  so  much  music,  theatre,  and 
literature;  and  there  will  grow  up  an  army 
whose  business  it  will  be  to  keep  him  in  order, 
and  to  cut  him  down  if  he  revolts,  as  was  done 
by  the  police  in  one  of  the  suburbs  of  Berlin  not 
long  ago.  The  German  workman  is  already  so 
entangled  in  the  ropes  of  insurance,  so  harried 
by  petty  officials,  so  branded  by  the  police,  and 
he  has  permitted  to  increase  such  a  host  of  guar- 
dians, that  revolt  or  revolution  is  practically  im- 
possible. Counting  the  army,  navy,  and  offi- 
cials, there  are  said  to  be  three  million  officials, 
great  and  small  in  Germany;  and  there  are  four- 
teen million  electors,  or,  roughly,  one  policeman 
to  every  five  adults.  And  those  three  million 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  497 

policemen,  armed  with  lethal  and  legal  weapons, 
are  inflexibly  and  unalterably  for  no  change. 
Does  the  workingman  ever  stop  to  think  that 
those  officials  draw  salaries  amounting  to  some- 
thing like  $1,200,000,000  a  year,  and  is  he  still 
fool  enough  to  think  that  he  does  not  pay  those 
salaries  to  these  slave-drivers !  I  have  said  that 
the  population  is  well  fed,  well  clothed,  and  well 
looked  after.  Of  course  they  are.  No  slave- 
owner so  maltreats  his  slaves  that  they  cannot 
work  for  him!  But  is  man  fed  by  bread  alone, 
even  in  the  sugared  form  of  music  and  the- 
atricals? 

If  the  socialist  Pygmalion  ever  succeeds  in 
bringing  his  statue  to  life,  how  she  will  scorn 
him,  hate  his  suffocating  environment,  wish  for 
the  wealth  and  softness  he  cannot  give,  desert 
him,  begging  to  return  to  her  marble  tomb 
again. 

Long  life  to  discontent,  say  I;  but  is  the 
workingman  such  a  fool  that  his  eyes  are  not 
opened  when  a  man  of  Bismarck's  way  of  think- 
ing, when  an  autocrat  like  the  Emperor  have 
favored  state  socialism!  Does  he  not  see  that 
socialism  is  the  neatest  hangman  of  them  all 
to  strangle  his  discontent!  Does  he  not  see 
the  demagogue  gradually  assuming  the  features 
and  the  powers  of  the  tyrant!  Tyranny  is  not 


498     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

alone  the  prerogative  of  an  aristocracy.  "It  is 
the  place  of  a  court  to  make  its  servants  insig- 
nificant. If  the  people  should  fall  into  the  same 
humor,  and  should  choose  their  servants  on 
the  same  principles  of  mere  obsequiousness  and 
flexibility,  and  total  vacancy  and  indifference 
of  opinion  in  all  public  matters,  then  no  party 
of  the  state  will  be  sound,  and  it  will  be  vain  to 
think  of  saving  it."  Thus  writes  Burke,  the 
champion  of  our  American  revolt  against  his 
own  country.  The  electors,  now  so  flattered  by 
the  smooth  phrases  of  their  tyrants  disguised 
as  liberators,  will  one  day  be  aghast  to  find 
themselves  in  a  veritable  house  of  correction 
paid  for  from  their  own  savings.  They  will 
have  learnt  then,  at  last,  that  you  cannot  get 
rid  of  the  fools  who  are  rich  by  deceiving  the 
fools  who  are  poor;  and  corporalism  will  be 
found  to  be  a  harsher,  fussier,  a  more  meddle- 
some and  a  more  indifferent  tyrant  than  even 
feudalism. 

Even  at  the  Krupp  works  at  Essen,  and  the 
various  branches  elsewhere,  where  there  is  the 
most  elaborate  combination  of  Lady  Bountiful 
and  successful  business  anywhere  in  the  world, 
men  are  not  satisfied.  If  they  are  not  contented 
there,  then  nowhere  in  this  world  will  the  work- 
ingman  be  contented.  The  Krupp  business 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  499 

employs  some  70,000  persons.  In  the  partic- 
ular Essen  works,  for  a  hundred  years,  there 
has  never  been  a  strike,  though  others  of  their 
employees  elsewhere  have  used  the  strike. 
Though  the  Cadburys  and  Levers  and  Taylors, 
in  England,  the  Armours,  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  the  National  Cash  Register  Com- 
pany, the  Procter  and  Gamble  Company,  the 
General  Electric  Company,  and  others  in  Amer- 
ica, and  the  famous  and  successful  adoption  of 
co-operation  in  Monsieur  Godin's  iron  foundry 
at  Guise,  in  France,  have  worked  along  the  lines 
of  recognition  of  their  workmen's  right  to  partici- 
pate in  the  profits,  there  is  nothing  on  such  an 
elaborate  scale  as  at  Essen,  under  the  regime  of 
the  Krupps. 

From  1904  to  1910  the  Krupps  spent,  for  bene- 
ficial institutions  of  all  kinds,  $14,250,000,  or  56 
per  cent,  of  the  dividends  during  that  time.  I 
have  passed  many  hours  at  Essen,  and  seen 
thoroughly,  from  cellar  to  attic,  this  truly  noble 
institution  for  the  comfortable  and  safe  guar- 
dianship of  men,  women,  and  children  who  are 
at  the  same  time  factors  in  a  huge  and  success- 
ful industrial  enterprise.  There  are  schools, 
technical  schools,  hospitals,  convalescent  homes, 
a  library  with  71,000  volumes,  theatre,  orches- 
tra, band,  lectures,  concerts,  pension  and  insur- 


500    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ance  funds,  lodgings  for  bachelors,  tenements 
and  dwellings  for  married  people,  separate  cot- 
tages for  widows  and  widowers  too  old  for  work, 
and  every  opportunity,  with  a  high  rate  of  inter- 
est, for  saving.  There  is  in  existence  a  co-oper- 
ative store,  as  well  managed  as  the  co-operative 
stores  at  Tuxedo  Park,  and  with  much  the  same 
system  of  rebates.  There  are  bathing  facilities, 
gymnasium,  a  boat  club,  a  system  of  providing 
hot  meals  from  a  central  kitchen,  reading-rooms 
and  smoking-rooms.  There  is  invested,  not  in- 
cluding the  value  of  the  land,  which  has  risen 
enormously  in  value,  over  $12,500,000  in  houses 
for  the  working-people,  the  return  on  the  money 
being  about  2%  per  cent.  It  would  require 
volumes — indeed,  two  bulky  volumes  were  issued 
last  year  by  the  company  to  celebrate  the  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  the  foundation  of  the 
Krupp  works  —  to  describe  merely  the  machinery 
for  making  the  people  comfortable. 

In  1851  the  Krupps  exhibited  at  the  exposition 
in  London  the  first  cannon  made  of  cast  steel; 
now  they  turn  out  more  shells  and  shrapnel  in 
a  week  than  were  used  at  the  whole  battle  of 
Koniggratz  (Sadowa),  which  lasted  from  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  till  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  on  July  3,  1866.  The  queen  of  this, 
the  greatest  factory  of  destructive  agencies  in 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  501 

the  world,  is  a  gentle  Madonna-faced  lady  who 
might  well  pose  for  a  statue  of  peace,  and  whose 
loveliness  is  a  mirror  of  the  countless  and  un- 
tiring benefactions  with  which  the  people  who 
work  here  are  surrounded.  Both  the  powers 
and  the  people  of  Germany  may  well  be  proud 
of  the  Krupps,  for  if  sane  beneficence  were  to  be 
raised  to  the  rank  of  statehood  this  great  col- 
ony would  well  deserve  the  honor.  The  gross 
profits  for  the  last  year  were  $9,000,000,  half 
of  which  was  written  off  and  the  rest  devoted 
to  the  reserve,  to  dividends,  and  to  contribu- 
tions to  the  invalid  and  pension  funds  of  the 
employees,  which  now  amount  to  $9,500,000. 
The  employees  also  have  on  deposit  with  the 
management  $8,700,000.  The  contribution  of 
the  Krupps  to  the  workmen's  state-insurance 
fund  amounted,  in  1910,  to  $1,320,000.  The 
Krupp  family  is  rich,  but  what  would  their 
wealth  have  been  had  they  practised  the  gob- 
bling and  juggling  financial  methods  of  -  — ; 
but  I  will  not  pillory  my  own  countrymen  by 
name,  for,  after  all,  our  political  methods  have 
made  them,  and  not  they  themselves. 

The  German  manufacturer  has  been  at  a  dis- 
advantage, too,  for  several  reasons,  and  this  may 
well  be  noted  as  one  of  Germany's  problems. 
She  has  not  the  deposits  of  coal  that  have  made 


502     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

England  rich,  nor  the  wonderful  soil  of  America, 
from  which  alone  we  take  $9,000,000,000  every 
year,  nor  France's  population,  now  at  a  stand- 
still, and  which  can  feed  itself  off  its  own  soil. 
She  has  been  a  large  borrower  of  capital  to 
finance  her  enormous  expansion  of  industry  and 
commerce,  and,  above  all,  the  gold  supply  of  the 
world,  which  in  the  last  resort  is  the  foundation 
of  credit,  is  not  in  her  hands,  nor  can  it  be  so 
long  as  British  and  American  fleets  keep  the 
ocean  highways  over  which  that  gold  travels. 

The  world's  gold  output  in  1911  was  $493,- 
100,000;  of  this  $177,600,000  came  from  the 
Transvaal;  $100,350,000  from  the  United  States; 
$63,600,000  from  Australia;  $42,300,000  from 
Russia;  $23,300,000  from  Mexico;  $35,600,000 
from  Rhodesia,  India,  and  Canada;  and  $15,- 
650,000  from  Central  and  South  America,  or 
$458,000,000,  of  the  total  output  of  $493,100,000, 
from  countries  which  in  time  of  war  would  be 
unlikely  to  ship  gold  to  Germany.  More  than 
one  half  the  output  comes  from  the  British  Em- 
pire alone.  To  those  who  are  satisfied  with  the 
easy  answer  to  the  reason  for  the  increased  cost 
of  living,  that  the  output  of  gold  has  increased, 
it  must  be  puzzling  to  learn  that  of  the  total  out- 
put, in  round  numbers,  of  $500,000,000,  $150,- 
000,000  is  used  in  the  arts  and  manufactures 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  503 

and  $150,000,000  goes  to  India,  where  it  is 
buried  and  hoarded,  and  $100,000,000  is  re- 
tained in  the  United  States  for  currency  and 
other  purposes.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
gold  output  of  the  world  doubled  between  1890 
and  1897,  and  nearly  doubled  again  between 
1897  and  1911,  money  is  dear,  and  is  likely  to  be 
so  long  as  present  conditions  last. 

The  reason  for  the  higher  cost  of  living  is  to 
be  found  in  the  movement  of  the  population, 
from  the  dulness  of  the  plough  to  the  sprightli- 
ness  of  the  cinematograph.  This  choice  every 
freeman  has  a  right  to  make  for  himself,  but  the 
trouble  arises  when  the  politician  comes  forward 
and  pays  his  admission  to  the  cinematograph  en- 
tertainment, out  of  the  public  funds,  in  order  to 
get  his  vote.  The  man  who  does  not  leave  the 
plough  under  those  conditions  is  either  a  fool  or 
a  saint,  and  the  percentage  of  the  growth  of 
cities  is  a  fair  measure  of  their  relative  numbers. 
The  increased  cost  of  living  is  the  result,  not  of 
too  much  gold,  but  of  too  little  labor  on  the  land, 
and  this  is  due,  in  turn,  to  the  voluptuous  rhet- 
oric of  the  political  street-walkers,  whose  prom- 
ises of  pleasure  are  as  illegitimate  as  they  are 
impossible  of  fulfilment.  A  debtor  nation  like 
Germany  is  highly  sensitive  to  these  conditions, 
and  just  as  she  is  overcoming,  by  her  splendid 


504     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

success  as  a  manufacturing  nation  this  problem, 
she  is  met  by  increased  and  ever-increasing  ri- 
valry. America,  in  1901,  exported  $466,000,- 
000  of  manufactures;  in  1891  only  $188,000,000; 
but  in  1911,  $910,000,000;  and  in  1912,  $1,021,- 
753,918.  We  now  have  in  America  225,000 
manufacturing  plants  employing  6,000,000  peo- 
ple, with  an  annual  pay-roll  of  $3,500,000,000 
and  producing  every  twelve  months  $15,000,- 
000,000  worth  of  goods.  The  total  value  of  ex- 
ports and  imports  of  Japan  thirty  years  ago  was 
$30,000,000,  or  87  cents  per  capita;  in  1911  the 
figures  were  $480,000,000,  or  $10  per  capita. 
England  during  the  years  1911  and  1912  sur- 
passed all  previous  figures  both  for  exports  and 
imports.  Germany's  rivals,  it  is  thus  seen,  have 
not  been  idle. 

The  agricultural  population  of  Germany  in 
1850  was  65  in  the  100;  it  is  now  less  than  one 
third.  In  1911,  after  a  bad  year  for  the  farm- 
ers, Germany  was  obliged  to  pay  out  some  $200,- 
000,000  more  than  usual  for  food.  The  total 
loans  of  the  German  banks  on  industrial  securi- 
ties rose  from  $107,000,000  in  1890  to  $632,- 
000,000  in  1910,  and  bankers  themselves  admit 
that  Germany  has  fallen  into  the  error  of  seek- 
ing and  accepting  credit  far  beyond  the  value  of 
the  capital  that  they  have  to  work  with.  Still 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  505 

more  dangerous  is  the  fact  that  55  per  cent,  of 
the  savings-bank  moneys  of  Germany  is  locked 
up  in  mortgages.  In  1907,  217  new  companies 
were  formed  in  Germany,  issuing  $62,050,900 
in  securities;  in  1909,  179  new  companies  issued 
$54,929,450  of  securities;  in  1910,  186  new  com- 
panies issued  $57,437,700  of  securities.  In  1910, 
340  companies  increased  their  capital  by  $142,- 
657,200.  In  1910  there  were  5,295  companies 
in  Germany  with  a  nominal  capital  of  $3,680,- 
979,400.  It  is  estimated  that  since  1895  there 
has  been  invested  in  industrial  companies  in 
Germany  $1,200,000,000.  It  is  to  be  said  also 
that  since  1897  German  agricultural  produc- 
tion has  doubled,  German  industrial  production 
increased  sevenfold,  and  Germany  is  said  to 
have  $4,750,000,000  in  her  savings-banks.  The 
value  of  imports  for  home  consumption,  exclu- 
sive of  the  precious  metals,  in  1911  was  $2,386,- 
200,000 ;  the  value  of  the  exports  of  home  prod- 
uce, exclusive  of  the  precious  metals,  was 
$2,025,450,000.  It  is  a  quaint  result  of  her 
temperament  and  her  good  forestry,  that  Ger- 
many sells  $25,000,000  worth  of  toys  a  year; 
she  is  veritably  the  workshop  of  Santa  Claus, 
and  many  more  than  25,000,000  children  would 
bless  her  did  they  know. 

German  financiers  affirm  that  she  can  stand 


506  GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

alone  financially,  while  others  assert  that  one 
sixth  of  her  capital,  I  have  heard  it  placed  at 
one  third,  is  borrowed  from  France  and  Eng- 
land. It  is  certain  at  least  that  the  American 
panic  of  1907,  and  the  recent  war  in  the  Near 
East,  have  seriously  embarrassed  Germany  finan- 
cially. 

As  Germany  can  only  feed,  even  in  good  har- 
vest years,  forty-eight  or  forty-nine  millions  of 
her  people,  a  large  proportion  of  her  profits  from 
industry  must  necessarily  go  to  the  purchase  of 
food  for  the  other  sixteen  or  seventeen  millions. 
The  consumption  of  meat  has  increased  among 
all  classes  in  Germany,  and  both  the  demands 
of  the  individual  and  of  the  state  have  increased 
with  the  increased  wealth  of  the  country.  In 
Prussia  alone  the  number  of  those  subject  to  in- 
come tax  has  increased  from  2,400,000  in  1892 
to  6,200,000  in  1912;  but  the  taxes  have  in- 
creased as  well,  or  from  $800,000,000  to  $1,675,- 
000,000. 

In  the  endeavor  to  increase  the  manufact- 
uring output  and  to  find  new  markets  German 
credit  has  been  stretched  to  a  dangerous  tenu- 
ity. While  the  war  feeling  was  at  its  height 
the  Kolnische  Zeitung,  a  conservative  and  able 
journal,  wrote:  "In  case  of  war  both  France  and 
Germany  will  be  obliged  to  borrow;  but  it  is 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  507 

certain  that  the  credit  of  Germany  cannot  as 
yet  be  compared  with  the  credit  of  France:  this 
is  a  strong  guarantee  of  peace." 

Wermuth,  said  by  impartial  judges  to  be  the 
ablest  secretary  of  the  treasury  the  German 
Empire  has  had  in  a  quarter  of  a  century,  re- 
signed in  1912,  on  the  general  ground  that  he 
would  not  be  responsible  for  the  finances  of  the 
empire,  if  it  was  proposed  to  continue  the  con- 
stant increase  of  national  expenditure,  by  a  con- 
stant increase  of  borrowing,  and  an  ever-increas- 
ing amount  of  interest-bearing  liabilities.  He 
must  have  smiled  to  himself  when  an  Imperial 
issue  at  four  per  cent,  put  out  in  February,  1913, 
was  not  only  not  over-subscribed  but  not  even 
all  taken. 

Unlike  the  French,  who  invest  their  savings 
small  and  large  in  national  loans,  the  Germans 
neglect  even  their  own  national  loans,  preferring 
the  higher  returns  for  their  investments  from  the 
innumerable  industries  launched  in  modern  Ger- 
many ;  so  pronounced  is  this  form  of  investment, 
that  a  director  of  the  Deutsche  Bank  has  warned 
his  countrymen,  that  every  month's  profits  are 
no  sooner  gained  than  they  are  put  out  again  in 
new  enterprises,  either  by  the  individuals  them- 
selves, or  by  the  banks  in  which  they  are  de- 
posited As  a  result,  the  liquid  capital  at  the 


508     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

disposal  of  Germany  is  dangerously  out  of  pro- 
portion to  her  borrowings  and  her  working  capi- 
tal. It  shows  a  fine  confidence  in  the  future, 
and  it  proves  what  needs  no  proof:  the  immense 
industrial  and  commercial  progress,  and  the  im- 
mense sea-carrying  trade  of  Germany.  Ger- 
many is  like  a  man  with  $1,000  in  the  bank 
to  check  upon,  but  doing  business  with  $100,000 
of  borrowed  capital,  upon  which  he  must  pay 
interest,  and  out  of  which  he  must  take  his 
running  expenses.  Such  a  one  has  no  provi- 
sion for  a  bad  year,  and  must  depend  upon 
more  credit  in  case  of  trouble;  and  in  the  case  of 
Germany,  it  may  be  added,  his  personal  and 
family  expenses  have  largely  increased.  The 
German  imperial  debt  had  increased  during 
the  first  twenty-two  years  of  the  present  Em- 
peror's reign,  or  from  1888  to  1910,  by  $1,040,- 
000,000,  and  of  that  sum  some  $650,000,000 
were  added  in  the  ten  years  from  1900  to  1910, 
when  Germany  was  building  her  fleet. 

Between  the  years  1905  and  1910  the  total  ex- 
port trade  of  Germany  increased  by  $408,225,- 
000,  but  the  whole  of  the  increase  was  due  to  the 
heavier  forms  of  manufactures:  machinery,  iron 
ware,  coal-tar  dyes,  iron  wire,  steel  rails,  and  raw 
iron.  The  increasing  competition  is  shown-  by 
the  fact  that  during  those  same  years  her  exports 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  509 

of  the  finer  manufactures,  such  as  cotton  and 
woollen  goods,  clothing,  gold  and  silver  ware, 
porcelain,  maps,  prints,  and  the  like,  actually 
decreased  by  $66,975,000! 

I  am  not  maintaining  for  a  moment  that  these 
problems  are  peculiar  to  Germany,  but  merely 
that,  owing  to  the  rapid  progress,  they  are  ag- 
gravated, and  that  to  point  out  Germany  as  a 
model  of  successful  achievement,  along  these 
and  other  lines,  in  order  to  bolster  up  political 
cure-alls  at  home,  is  a  betrayal  of  crass  ignorance 
of  the  general  internal  situation  of  the  country, 
and  once  such  prejudiced  pleaders  are  found  out, 
the  rebound  will  go  too  far  the  other  way.  That 
were  a  pity,  too,  for  we  have  much  to  learn  from 
Germany. 

The  $30,000,000  in  gold  in  the  Julius  Tower  at 
Spandau,  called  the  war-chest,  and  the  income 
from  railroads,  forests,  and  mines,  are  to  be  put 
down  on  the  other  side  of  the  ledger,  but  as  a 
year's  war,  it  is  calculated,  would  cost  France, 
England,  or  Germany  some  $2,300,000,000  each, 
these  sums  are  of  negligible  importance. 

The  Prussian  railways  cost  $2,250,000,000, 
and  are  now  valued  at  twice  that  sum,  and  pay 
an  average  of  seven  per  cent,  on  the  invested  cap- 
ital. Maintenance  costs  are  included  in  the 
total  annual  expenses,  and  there  is  no,  so  it 


510     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

is  claimed,  actual  depreciation.  Of  the  net  rev- 
enue of  $157,330,417  in  1909,  about  $55,000,000 
are  transferred  to  the  state  revenue,  out  of 
which  all  charges  of  the  state,  including  interest 
on  bonds,  are  paid.  The  rest  is  used  for  new  con- 
struction, sinking  funds,  reserve  funds,  and  so  on. 

The  report  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission of  1909-1910  states  that  there  are  nearly 
$19,000,000,000  of  railway  capital  outstanding 
in  America.  There  are  240,438  miles  of  single 
track  in  the  United  States;  59,000  locomotives, 
35,000  for  freight,  and  a  total  of  2,290,000  cars 
of  all  kinds ;  and  the  railways  carried  in  one  year 
971,683,000  passengers  and  1,850,000,000  tons 
of  freight.  In  1910,  386  persons  were  killed,  but, 
what  is  often  forgotten,  more  than  one  half  the 
total  accidents  were  due  to  stealing  rides  and 
trespassing  on  the  tracks.  The  railways  in  the 
United  States  are  our  largest  purchasers  by  far, 
and  for  every  dollar  they  earn  42  cents  is  spent 
in  wages,  26  cents  for  material,  raw  or  manufact- 
ured, before  anything  is  given  out  for  interest 
on  loans  or  dividends. 

A  first-class  ticket  in  Germany  is  taxed  16  per 
cent,  on  the  price  of  the  ticket;  a  second-class 
ticket,  8  per  cent. ;  a  third-class  ticket,  4  per  cent. ; 
the  fourth-class  ticket,  nothing.  Crowded  and 
uncomfortable  travelling  in  Germany  is  cheap; 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  511 

comfortable  travelling  in  Germany  is  very  dear 
indeed.  The  herding  of  people  in  the  fourth- 
class  carriages  in  Germany  resembles  our  cattle- 
cars  rather  than  transportation  for  human 
beings.  Such  conditions  would  not  be  toler- 
ated in  America,  but  against  these  state-owned 
railways  there  is  no  redress.  No  luggage,  ex- 
cept hand  luggage,  is  carried  free.  Not  once, 
but  many  times  in  Germany,  my  first-class 
ticket  found  me  no  accommodation,  and  often 
in  changing  from  the  main  line  to  a  branch  line 
not  even  a  first-class  compartment.  Shippers  in 
the  coal  and  iron  districts,  when  I  was  there, 
complained  bitterly  that  there  were  not  enough 
freight-cars,  that  their  complaints  were  smoth- 
ered in  bureaucratic  portfolios,  and  that  private 
enterprise  in  the  shape  of  proposals  to  build  new 
lines  was  disregarded.  The  tyranny  of  Prussia 
extends  even  into  the  railway  field.  The  Oder- 
berg-Wien  line  was  built  to  avoid  using  the 
Saxon  state  railway  lines,  was  a  spite  railway  in 
fact.  Here  again  there  was  no  redress,  no  one 
to  appeal  to  against  the  autocrat. 

In  a  debate  in  the  Reichstag,  in  January,  1913, 
there  was  much  complaint  that  the  Prussian 
government  was  conducting  the  railways  with 
the  least  possible  outlay,  thus  saving  money  for 
the  state,  but  hampering  the  industrial  interests 
of  the  country.  It  was  stated  that  there  were 


512    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

not  enough  engines  or  freight-cars,  there  was  an 
inadequate  staff,  and  that  as  a  consequence,  the 
loss  to  the  coal  industry  had  been  $11,500,000 
and  to  the  coal-miners  $3,375,000. 

On  the  state-owned  railways  of  the  west  of 
France  the  break-down  is  ludicrously  complete, 
and  the  people  are  staggered  by  the  official  es- 
timates that  it  will  require  at  least  $100,000,000 
to  put  them  in  decent  running  order. 

In  twenty  years  the  American  railways  have 
practically  been  rebuilt,  with  heavier  rails,  bet- 
ter bridges,  more  permanent  stations,  and  so  on; 
while  twenty  years  ago  it  cost  a  passenger  2.165 
cents  to  travel  a  mile,  to-day  it  costs  him  1.916 
cents.  We  need  a  lot  of  bustling  about  abroad 
before  we  realize  how  much  we  have  to  be  grate- 
ful for  at  home! 

Probably  the  most  costly  and  the  most  trouble- 
some of  Germany's  problems  is  her  conquered 
provinces :  Hanover,  Schleswig-Holstein,  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  and  Poland.  Hanover,  which  was 
taken  by  Prussia  and  her  king  deposed,  is  now- 
adays a  minor  matter  of  the  relations  between 
courts,  individuals,  and  families,  which  may  be 
said  to  be  settled  by  the  arranged  marriage  be- 
tween the  Kaiser's  charming  daughter  and  the 
heir  to  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  whose  ancestors 
were  kings  of  Hanover. 

The  Danes,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  northern 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  513 

part  of  these  provinces,  still  resist  Prussianiza- 
tion.  They  keep  to  themselves  and  their  lan- 
guage, send  their  children  to  school  in  Den- 
mark, and  resist  all  attempts  at  social  and  racial 
incorporation.  They  are  troublesome,  as  an  in- 
dependent and  surly  daughter-in-law  might  be 
troublesome.  Alsace-Lorraine  and  Posen,  on 
the  contrary,  are  outspoken  and  potentially  dan- 
gerous foes  in  Germany's  own  household. 

In  1872  Bismarck  said:  "Alsace-Lorraine  will 
be  placed  on  an  equality  with  the  other  German 
states,  ...  so  that  the  people  may  be  induced 
to  forget,  in  a  comparatively  short  time,  the 
trouble  and  distress  of  the  war  and  of  annexa- 
tion." In  1912,  a  loyal  Alsatian  German  writes: 
"Das  Elsass,  dies  jiingstgeborene  Kind  der 
deutschen  Volkerfamilie,  braucht  etwas  mehr 
Liebe."  Forty  years  of  Prussian  rule  have  not  ful- 
filled the  promise  of  Bismarck.  This  same  Alsa- 
tian writer  continues :  "  In  short,  we  are  approach- 
ing ever  nearer  to  the  condition  of  the  citizens  of 
all  the  other  German  States,  as  Baden,  Saxony, 
Bavaria,  where  they  are  also  not  always  of  one 
mind  with  the  higher  ruling  powers." 

It  is  difficult  for  the  American,  who,  no  mat- 
ter what  particular  State  he  lives  in,  is  first 
of  all  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  to  under- 
stand this  jealousy  and,  in  some  quarters,  bitter 


514     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

dislike  of  Prussia.  If  the  State  of  New  York 
had  sixty  million  of  our  ninety  million  popu- 
lation, and  if  the  governor  of  New  York  were 
also  perpetual  President  of  the  United  States, 
commanded  the  army  and  navy,  controlled  the 
foreign  policy,  and  appointed  the  cabinet  min- 
isters, who  were  responsible  to  him  alone,  we 
could  get  an  approximate  idea  of  how  the  people 
of  Virginia,  Massachusetts,  Illinois,  and  Cali- 
fornia would  feel  toward  New  York.  This  is  a 
rough-drawn  comparison  with  the  situation  in 
Germany.  If,  in  addition,  we  had  the  Philip- 
pine Islands  where  Maine  is,  and  Cuba  where 
Texas  is,  it  is  easy  to  recognize  the  consequent 
complications. 

We  should  remember  this  picture  in  dealing 
with  this  German  problem,  which,  at  any  rate, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  kindly  feeling  and  suc- 
cessful adoption  of  these  foreign  peoples  into 
the  German  family,  has  been  a  dire  failure.  The 
miserable  failure  of  the  Germans  in  Southwest 
Africa,  their  inconclusive  war  with  the  Herreros, 
and  the  absolute  break-down  of  Prussian  meth- 
ods with  the  natives,  is  scarcely  more  typical 
than  the  failure  in  Alsace-Lorraine  and  Poland. 
The  Prussian  belief  in  sand-paper  as  an  emollient 
must  be  by  now  rudely  shaken. 

At  last  a  constitution  has  been  given  the  two 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  515 

conquered  provinces.  The  governor  is  to  be 
advised  by  a  parliament,  but  the  government  is 
not  responsible  to  the  parliament,  which  is  com- 
posed of  two  houses.  The  upper  house  has 
thirty-six  members,  eighteen  of  whom  are  nom- 
inees of  the  Emperor  and  eighteen  from  the 
churches,  universities,  and  principal  cities.  The 
lower  house  is  to  be  elected  by  popular  franchise. 
Three  years'  residence  in  the  same  place  entitles 
a  man  to  a  vote,  but  every  voter  over  thirty-five 
years  of 'age  has  two  votes,  and  every  voter  over 
forty -five  has  three  votes. 

This,  as  an  American  can  appreciate,  has  not 
been  received  with  enthusiasm,  and  their  conduct 
has  been  so  provoking  that  the  Emperor,  during 
a  recent  visit,  scolded  the  people,  in  an  interview 
with  the  mayor  of  a  certain  town,  and,  what 
caused  great  amusement  among  the  enemies  of 
Prussia,  threatened  to  incorporate  them  into 
Prussia,  as  had  been  done  with  Hanover,  if  they 
were  not  better  behaved.  This,  of  course,  was 
seized  upon  as  an  admission  that  to  be  taken 
into  the  Prussian  family  was  of  all  the  hardships 
the  most  dreadful.  The  socialist  journal  Vor- 
wdrts  spoke  of  Prussia  as  "that  brutal  country 
which  thus  openly  confesses  its  dishonor  to  all 
the  world."  Herr  Scheidemann  asked  in  the 
Reichstag,  if  Prussia  then  acknowledged  herself 


516     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

to  be  a  sort  of  house  of  correction,  and  "has 
Prussia,  then,  become  the  German  Siberia?"  In 
1911  the  Reichstag  gave  the  provinces  three 
votes  in  the  Federal  Council. 

Metz,  it  is  said,  is  more  French  than  ever,  and 
thousands  troop  across  the  boundaries  on  the 
anniversary  of  the  French  national  holiday,  to 
celebrate  it  on  French  soil.  The  conquered  prov- 
inces are  kept  in  order,  but  the  French  language, 
French  customs,  French  culture,  are  still  to  the 
fore,  and  so  far  as  loyalty,  affection,  or  a  change 
of  mind  and  heart  is  concerned  the  conversion 
is  still  incomplete.  The  inhabitants  have  been 
baptized  Germans,  but  very  few  of  them  have 
taken  voluntarily,  their  first  communion  of  na- 
tionalization. 

"  On  changerait  plutot  le  cceur  de  place, 
Que  de  changer  la  vieille  Alsace." 

The  German,  Karl  Lamprecht,  in  his  valuable 
history  of  contemporary  Germany,  is  more  hope- 
ful of  the  situation  than  are  other  writers  and 
observers.  Professor  Werner  Wittich  maintains 
that  the  best  of  the  intellectual  side  of  life  in 
Alsace  is  impregnated  with  French  culture  and 
traditions;  and  even  German  officers  long  sta- 
tioned in  the  two  conquered  provinces  admit  the 
stubborn  allegiance  of  the  people  to  French  cus  • 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  517 

toms,  habits,  beliefs,  and  traditions.  But  how- 
ever that  may  be,  and  it  is  admittedly  a  ques- 
tion that  different  prejudices  and  hopes  will 
answer  differently,  there  is  no  denial  on  the  part 
of  any  one,  high  or  low,  that  the  Prussian  bureau- 
cratic mandarins  have  made  no  progress  in  win- 
ning the  affection  or  the  voluntary  loyalty  of  the 
people.  The  Prussian  has  had  recourse  to  the 
advice  given  by  Prince  Billow,  "if  you  cannot 
be  loved,  then  you  must  be  feared."  A  friend 
who  is  only  a  friend,  -an  ally  who  is  only  an  ally, 
a  servant  who  only  serves  you  because  he  is 
afraid  of  you,  is  not  only  an  uncomfortable  but 
a  dangerous  factor  in  any  establishment,  whether 
domestic  or  national.  Corporalism,  begun  by 
Frederick  the  Great  and  fastened  upon  Ger- 
many by  Bismarck,  has  had  its  successes.  I 
recognized  them,  indeed,  on  returning  to  Ger- 
many after  twenty-five  years,  as  astounding 
successes,  but  they  have  their  weak  side  too.  A 
barracks  can  never  be  the  ideal  of  a  home,  nor 
a  corporal  the  ideal  of  a  guide,  philosopher, 
and  friend.  Their  own  philosopher  Nietzsche 
writes:  "  the  state  is  the  coldest  of  all  cold  mon- 
sters." 

Joseph  de  Maistre,  writing  of  the  Slav  tem- 
perament, says:  "Si  on  enterrait  un  desir  Slave 
sous  une  forteresse,  il  la  ferait  sauter."  Ger- 
many has  some  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  true, 


518     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

In  the  northeast  of  Germany  live  some  3,000,- 
000  Poles  under  Prussian  supervision  and  laws, 
and  ruled  by  a  Prussian  governor.  There  are 
some  7,000,000  or  8,000,000  Poles  divided  be 
tween  Russia,  Austria-Hungary,  and  Prussia, 
and  behind  these  are  165,000,000  Russians. 
The  boundary  between  this  mass  and  Germany 
is  one  of  sand;  and  the  railway  journey  from 
Posen  to  Berlin,  is  a  matter  of  only  four  hours. 
If  we  were  in  Germany's  shoes,  we  should  prob- 
ably take  some  pains  to  be -well  guarded  in  that 
quarter.  We  should,  however,  do  it  in  quite  an- 
other fashion.  We  should,  if  possible,  turn  over 
the  inhabitants  to  their  own  governing,  as  Eng- 
land has  done  in  South  Africa,  as  we  have  tried 
to  do  in  Cuba,  and  as  we  would  do  gladly  in  the 
Philippines,  if  every  intelligent  man  who  knows 
the  situation  there,  were  not  assured  that  rob- 
bery, murder,  and  license  would  follow  on  the 
heels  of  our  departure;  and  that  instead  of  doing 
a  magnanimous  thing  we  should  be  shirking  our 
responsibilities  in  the  most  cowardly  fashion.  It 
is  bad  enough  to  know,  that  we  have  such  cyni- 
cal political  sophists  in  Congress,  that  they  would 
even  suffer  that  catastrophe  to  innocent  people 
in  the  Philippines,  if  they  thought  it  would  make 
them  votes  at  home. 

Prussia  does  not  recognize  such  methods  of 
ruling.     Corporalism    is    their   only   way,   and, 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  519 

where  the  people  are  fit  to  govern  themselves,  a 
very  bad  and  humiliating  way,  for  the  Eden  of 
the  bureaucrat  is  the  hell  of  the  governed.  If 
the  Germans  approve  it  for  themselves,  it  is  not 
our  business  to  comment;  but  where  these  meth- 
ods are  applied  to  foreign  peoples,  we  both  antici- 
pate and  applaud  their  failure. 

The  insurrections  in  Russian  and  Austrian 
Poland,  had  their  echoes  in  Posen,  and  since 
1849  Prussia  has  tried  in  every  way  to  substi- 
tute Germans  for  Poles,  in  the  country,  and  to 
make  the  German  language  predominant  in  the 
churches,  schools,  and  in  the  administration. 
The  Poles  have  resisted,  emphasizing  their  re- 
sistance in  1867,  when  they  were  included  in  the 
North  German  Federation,  and  again  in  1871, 
when  they  were  included  in  the  new  German 
Empire. 

The  Emperor  William  I,  in  1886,  said:  "The 
increasing  predominance  of  the  Polish  over  the 
German  element  in  certain  provinces  of  the 
east  makes  it  a  duty  of  the  government  to  guar- 
antee the  existence  and  the  development  of  the 
German  population."  Since  1871  the  Poles 
have  increased  so  much  faster  than  the  Germans 
that  there  is  danger  of  complete  extermination 
of  the  German  population.  In  1902  the  grand- 
son of  William  I,  the  present  Emperor,  said  at 
Marienburg:  "Polish  arrogance  is  unbearable, 


620     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

and  I  am  obliged  to  appeal  to  my  people  to  de- 
fend themselves  against  it,  for  the  preservation 
of  their  national  well-being.  It  is  a  question  of 
the  defence  of  the  civilization  and  the  culture 
of  Germany.  To-day  and  to-morrow,  as  in  the 
past,  we  must  fight  against  the  common  enemy." 
This  speech  of  the  Emperor  was  made  at  Marien- 
burg,  a  fine  old  town,  once  very  prosperous,  and 
in  the  days  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  playing  a 
conspicuous  part  with  the  other  Hanseatic  towns. 
This  town  was  also  the  head  and  seat  of  the 
Teutonic  Order,  and  it  was  this  Teutonic  Order 
which,  in  1230,  began  the  work  of  converting  the 
then  heathen  Prussians,  along  lines  not  unlike 
those  of  the  Prussian  Ansiedlungskommission  of 
to-day. 

Prussia  has  attempted  to  solve  this  question 
by  establishing  a  government  in  the  province, 
pledged  to  the  introduction  of  the  German  lan- 
guage, and  so  far  as  possible  of  German  manners 
and  customs.  This  has  been  met  with  fierce 
opposition,  and  never  have  I  heard  in  the  col- 
onies of  other  countries,  except  in  Korea,  under 
the  present  Japanese  administration,  such  fanat- 
ical hatred,  expressed  in  words,  as  I  have  heard 
in  Posen.  If  you  dislike  Prussia,  do  not  attempt 
to  revile  her  yourself;  rather  go  to  Posen  and 
hear  it  done  in  a  far  more  satisfying  way. 

The  religious  question  enters  largely  into  the 


GERMAN   PROBLEMS  521 

matter,  and  the  ignorant  Poles  are  even  taught 
that  the  Virgin  Mary,  or  the  "Polish  Queen," 
will  not  understand  their  intercessions  if  they 
are  not  made  in  the  Polish  language.  In  1870 
there  was  one  Polish  newspaper  in  Germany, 
to-day  there  are  138. 

From  1886  to  1910  the  Ansiedlungskommis- 
sion  or  committee  of  colonization,  have  spent 
$170,896,325,  and  have  received  $51,863,175, 
leaving  a  net  expenditure  of  $119,033,150.  This 
large  expenditure  has  resulted  in  the  settle- 
ment upon  the  land  of  18,507  families,  or  about 
111,000  persons.  The  total  number  settled 
is  now  131,000  persons.  Each  male  adult  Ger- 
man settler  has  cost  the  state  something  over 
$32,000!  This  is  probably  the  most  extrava- 
gant colonization  scheme  ever  attempted  in  the 
world. 

But  even  this  expenditure  has  not  brought 
success,  and  for  a  very  interesting  reason. 
Again  the  Germans  have  been  remarkably  suc- 
cessful in  their  dealings  with  the  inanimate,  but 
the  Arcana  imperil  are  still  hidden  from  them. 
They  have  redeemed  the  land,  taught  the  Poles, 
as  well  as  the  German  settlers,  how  to  farm  suc- 
cessfully; largely  increased  the  output  of  grain, 
fruit,  pigs,  calves,  chickens,  geese,  and  eggs,  for 
which  Germany  spends  several  hundred  millions 


GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

a  year  abroad;  and  seen  to  it  that  the  breed  of 
cows,  pigs,  horses,  chickens,  and  geese  is  kept  at 
a  high  standard.  But  now  the  Poles  will  sell 
no  more  land.  They  have  profited,  not  been 
ruined,  by  what  has  come  out  of  the  belly  of  the 
Trojan  horse!  The  commission  is  at  a  stand- 
still, and  it  is  now  proposed  to  enforce  the  Prus- 
sian law  of  1908  for  the  expropriation  of  Po- 
lish estates.  This  law  was  overwhelmingly  de- 
feated in  the  Reichstag  in  February,  1913,  but 
the  Chancellor  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  declared 
that  it  was  an  affair  of  Prussia,  with  which  the 
Reichstag  has  nothing  to  do,  and  the  sand-paper 
of  the  Prussian  bureaucracy  will  probably  be 
rubbed  upon  the  Polish  wound  anew. 

This  attempt  to  build  a  line  of  moral  and  in- 
tellectual forts,  supplemented  by  German  set- 
tlers, on  the  land  between  Russia  and  Prussia, 
and  to  stop  the  inrush  of  the  Slavic  population, 
has  ample  excuse  behind  it.  It  is  undoubtedly 
in  case  of  war  a  serious  danger  to  Germany  to 
leave  herself  unguarded  there.  As  to  what  will 
come  of  the  social  and  racial  questions,  prophecy 
alone  can  answer,  and  I  have  far  too  much  im- 
agination to  venture  upon  prophecy.  The  care 
and  thoroughness  with  which  the  work  is  done 
is  beyond  all  praise,  but  it  is  as  difficult  to  make 
your  brother  love  you  by  taking  thought  there- 


GERMAN  PROBLEMS  523 

on,  as  it  is  to  add  a  cubit  to  one's  stature  by  the 
same  method. 

Professor  Ludwig  Bernhard,  while  regretting 
that  this  attempt  at  Germanization  has  not  suc- 
ceeded, admits  that  Prussian  methods  are  hope- 
less in  such  matters.  They  have,  on  the  con- 
trary, awakened  national  feeling,  encouraged  the 
forming  of  agricultural  societies,  and  strength- 
ened the  Bank  of  Posen,  which  has  become  the 
financial  citadel  of  opposition.  Professor  Bern- 
hard  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  doubts  if 
even  the  putting  into  force  of  the  expropriation 
law  of  1908  will  bring  about  any  better  results. 
To  an  American  this  lack  of  unity  seems  to  be 
perhaps  of  exaggerated  importance.  Wir  brau- 
chen  nicht  diese  Nordlichter  (We  do  not  need 
these  northern  luminaries),  is  a  phrase  of  a  cer- 
tain Bavarian  official,  and  in  lower  or  louder 
tones  one  hears  the  phrase  all  over  Germany  out- 
side of  Prussia,  and  loudest  of  all  in  these  con- 
quered provinces. 

To  legislate  men  into  mechanical  relations 
with  one  another  may  keep  the  peace  tem- 
porarily, but  it  is  not  a  final  solution  of  the  in- 
tricate problem  of  living  together  in  our  hud- 
dled civilization.  The  day  has  gone  by  when 
we  could  rule  men  without  gaining  at  least  their 
respect,  and  if  possible  their  affection.  Prus- 


524     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

sia's  stiffness  and  newness  as  a  governing  power; 
her  lack  of  a  high  moral  or  religious  tone,  for 
there  is  a  rapidly  increasing  tendency  there  to 
agree  with  the  writer  during  the  French  Revolu- 
tion: la  question  de  dieu  manque  (Tactualite;  her 
hard  and  inflexible  methods,  make  her  a  churlish 
neighbor  and  an  arrogant  master.  In  forty 
years  Prussia  has  accomplished  great  things  de- 
spite these  disadvantages  of  temperament,  of 
tradition,  and  despite  these  external  dangers 
and  problems.  She  is  learning  now  that  there 
are  not  only  individuals  but  whole  peoples  who 
say,  as  William  the  Conqueror  said  to  the  Pope : 
"Never  have  I  taken  an  oath  of  fealty,  nor  shall 
I  ever  do  so." 


X 

"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  AND  MALICE" 

IT  has  always  been  considered  sound  doctrine 
among  Christians  that  they  should  love  one 
another.  Vigorous  exponents  of  the  doc- 
trine, however,  have  ever  been  few  in  numbers. 
As  the  world  gets  more  crowded,  and  we  find  it 
more  and  more  difficult  to  make  room  for  our- 
selves, and  to  get  a  living,  we  find  antagonisms 
and  defensive  tactics,  occupying  so  much  of  our 
time  and  energy  that  loving  one  another  is  al- 
most lost  sight  of.  It  has  been  found  necessary 
even  among  those  of  the  same  nation  to  legislate 
for  love.  We  call  such  laws,  with  dull  contempt 
for  irony,  social  legislation.  In  Germany,  and 
now  in  England,  the  modern  sacrament  of  loving 
one  another  consists  in  licking  stamps;  these 
stamps  are  then  stuck  on  cards,  which  bind  the 
brethren  together  in  mutual  and  adhesive  help- 
fulness. 

With  nations  the  problem  is  not  so  easily  and 
superficially  solved;  because  no  one  body  of 
legislators  and  police  has  jurisdiction  over  all 
the  parties  concerned.  As  a  result  of  this  just 

525 


526     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

now  in  Europe,  wisdom  is  not  the  arbiter;  on 
the  contrary,  prejudices,  passions,  indiscretions, 
and  follies  on  the  part  of  all  the  antagonists 
preserve  a  certain  dangerous  equipoise. 

After  you  have  seen  something  and  heard  a 
great  deal  of  these  antagonisms  between  nations; 
read  their  newspapers;  talked  with  the  protago- 
nists and  with  their  rulers,  and  with  the  responsi- 
ble servants  of  the  State;  discussed  with  pro- 
fessors and  legislators  these  questions;  and 
listened  to  the  warriors  on  both  sides,  you  are 
somewhat  bewildered.  There  are  so  many  rea- 
sons why  this  one  should  distrust  that  one,  so 
many  rather  unnatural  alliances  for  protection 
against  one  another,  so  much  friendship  of  the 
sort  expressed  by  the  phrase,  "on  aime  toujours 
quelqu'un  contre  quelqu'un,"  so  much  suspicious 
watching  the  movements  of  one  another,  that 
one  is  reminded  of  the  jingle  of  one's  youth: 

"There's  a  cat  in  the  garden  laying  for  a  rat, 
There's  a  boy  with  a  catapult  a-laying  for  the  cat, 
The  cat's  name  is  Susan,  the  boy's  name  is  Jim, 
And  his  father  round  the  corner  is  a-laying  for  him." 

Even  to  the  youngest  of  us,  and  to  the  most 
inexperienced,  this  betokens  a  strained  situation. 
The  first  and  most  natural  result  is  that  each 
nation's  "watchmen  who  sit  above  in  an  high 
tower,"  whether  they  be  the  professionals  se- 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    527 

lected  by  the  people  or  merely  amateur  patriots, 
are  forever  crying  out  for  greater  armaments. 

At  the  time  of  the  Boxer  troubles  in  China, 
when  Germany  sent  some  ships  to  demand  repara- 
tion for  the  murder  of  her  ambassador  in  Peking, 
she  had  only  two  ships  left  at  home  to  guard  her 
own  shores.  When  all  England  was  exasperated 
by  the  Boer  telegram  sent  by  the  Kaiser,  or,  if 
the  truth  is  to  be  told,  by  his  advisers,  the  late 
Baron  Marschal  von  Bieberstein  and  Prince 
Hohenlohe,  to  President  Krtiger,  official  Ger- 
many lamented  publicly  that  she  lacked  a  power- 
ful navy.  Only  a  week  after  the  Boers  declared 
war  the  Kaiser  is  reported  to  have  said:  "Bitter 
is  our  need  of  a  strong  navy."  Germany  has 
noticed,  too,  not  without  suspicion,  that— 

In  1904  England  had  202,000  tons  of  war- 
ships in  the  Mediterranean  and  none  in  the 
North  Sea. 

In  1907  England  had  135,000  tons  of  war- 
ships in  the  Mediterranean  and  166,000  tons  in 
the  North  Sea. 

In  1909  England  had  123,000  tons  of  war- 
ships in  the  Mediterranean  and  427,000  tons  in 
the  North  Sea. 

In  1912  England  had  126,000  tons  of  war- 
ships in  the  Mediterranean  and  481,000  tons  in 
the  North  Sea. 


.528  GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

At  last  accounts  England  had  50,000  tons  of 
war-ships  in  the  Mediterranean  and  500,000  tons 
in  the  North  Sea. 

There  has  been  a  steady  increase  of  the  navy 
in  Germany.  In  1900  the  tonnage  of  war-ships 
and  large  cruisers  over  5,000  tons  was  152,000; 
in  1911  it  was  823,000.  The  number  of  heavy 
guns  in  1900  was  52;  in  1911  it  was  330.  The 
horse-power  of  engines  in  1900  was  160,000;  in 
1911  it  was  1,051,000.  The  naval  crews  in  1900 
numbered  28,326;  in  1911,  57,353;  and  in  1913 
the  German  naval  personnel  will  consist  of  3,394 
officers  and  69,495  men.  Between  1900  and  1911 
the  tonnage  of  the  British  fleet  increased  from 
215,000  to  1,716,000;  of  the  German  fleet  from 
152,000  to  829,000. 

In  ten  years  British  naval  expenditure  has  in- 
creased from  $172,500,000  to  $222,500,000;  in 
Germany  the  expenditure  has  jumped  from  $47,- 
500,000  to  $110,000,000;  in  America  the  increase 
is  from  $80,000,000  to  $132,500,000.  Out  of 
these  total  sums  Great  Britain  spends  one  third, 
America  one  fifth,  and  Germany  one  half  on 
new  construction. 

Germany  has  a  navy  league  numbering  over 
one  million  active  and  honorary  members;  a 
periodical,  Die  Flotte,  published  by  the  league 
with  a  circulation  of  over  400,000.  This  league 


529 

not  only  educates  but  excites  the  whole  nation 
by  a  vigorous  campaign  which  never  ceases.  It 
takes  its  members  on  excursions  to  seaports  to 
see  the  ships;  it  holds  exhibitions  throughout 
the  country  with  pictures  and  lecturers;  it  sup- 
ports seamen's  homes,  and  helps  to  equip  boys 
washing  to  enter  the  navy ;  it  lends  its  encourage- 
ment to  the  two  school-ships  which  are  partly 
supported  from  public  funds;  it  sees  to  it  that 
war-ships  are  named  after  provinces  and  cities, 
creating  a  friendly  rivalry  among  them;  and 
lately,  out  of  its  surplus  funds,  it  has  presented 
a  gun-boat  to  the  nation. 

The  leading  spirit  of  this  organization  is 
Admiral  von  Tirpitz,  at  present  the  German 
secretary  of  the  navy  and  probably  the  most 
dangerous  mischief-maker  in  Europe.  In  ad- 
dition to  this  work  a  campaign  is  waged  in  the 
press  for  the  increase  of  the  navy,  in  which  a 
number  of  experts  are  engaged.  I  have  been 
told  by  Germans  who  ought  to  know,  but  who 
deprecate  this  exciting  campaigning,  that  the 
press  is  so  largely  influenced  by  Admiral  von 
Tirpitz  and  his  corps  of  press-agents  and 
writers,  that  it  is  even  difficult  to  procure  the 
publication  of  a  protest  or  a  reply.  Indeed, 
were  it  my  habit  to  go  into  personal  matters, 
I  could  offer  ample  proof  of  this  contention,  that 


530    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  opponents  of  naval  expansion  are  cleverly 
shut  out  of  the  press  altogether. 

Wilhelmshafen,  the  naval  station  on  the  North 
Sea,  has  been  fortified  till  it  is  said  to  be  impreg- 
nable; the  same  has  been  done  for  Heligoland, 
and  the  mouths  of  the  Elbe  and  the  Weser  have 
also  been  strongly  fortified.  At  Kiel  are  the 
naval  technical  school,  an  arsenal,  and  dry  and 
floating  docks,  and  the  canal  itself  is  being 
widened  and  deepened  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
largest  ships  of  war. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  the  beginnings 
of  all  this  date  back  only  to  1898,  when  the  first 
navy  bill  was  passed  through  the  Reichstag  writh 
much  difficulty,  and  only  after  the  Emperor  and 
his  ministers  had  brought  every  influence  to  bear 
upon  the  members,  Germany  is  certainly  to  be 
congratulated  upon  her  success.  Nor  is  she  to 
be  blamed  for  remembering,  and  regretting,  that 
the  two  most  important  harbors  used  by  her 
trade  are  Antwerp  and  Rotterdam,  the  one  in 
Belgium,  the  other  in  Holland. 

The  Kielerwoche,  or  Kiel  Regatta,  has  grown 
from  the  sailing-matches  of  a  few  small  yachts 
into  one  of  the  best-managed,  most  picturesque, 
and  gayest  yachting  weeks  in  the  world.  Indeed, 
from  the  stand-point  of  hospitality,  orderliness, 
imposing  array  of  shipping,  and  good  racing  and 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     531 

friendliness  to  the  stranger,  I  am  not  sure  that 
it  is  equalled  at  either  Newport  or  Cowes.  Were 
I  writing  merely  from  my  personal  experience,  I 
should  declare  unhesitatingly  that  it  is  the  most 
splendid  and  best-managed  picnic  on  the  water 
that  one  can  attend,  and  lovers  of  yachts  and 
yachting  should  not  fail  to  see  it.  This  Kieler- 
woche,  too,  has,  and  is  intended  to  have,  an  influ- 
ence in  teaching  the  Germans  to  aid  and  abet 
their  Emperor  and  his  ministers  in  making  Ger- 
many a  great  sea  power. 

When  a  nation  for  more  than  a  hundred  years 
has  been  quite  comfortably  safe  from  any  fear 
of  attack  because  she  has  been  easily  first  in 
commerce,  wealth,  industry,  and  in  sea  power, 
it  comes  as  a  shock,  even  to  a  phlegmatic  people, 
to  learn  that  they  are  being  rapidly  overhauled 
commercially,  financially,  industrially,  and  as  a 
fighting  force  on  the  sea;  and  all  this  within  a 
few  years. 

England  with  her  money  subsidies,  with  her 
troops,  and  with  her  navy  has  heretofore  pro- 
vided against  Continental  aggression  by  the 
diplomatic  philosophy  of  a  balance  of  power. 
She  has  arranged  her  alliances  with  Continental 
powers  so  that  no  one  of  them  could  become  a 
menace  to  herself.  She  did  so  against  the  Spain 
of  Charles  V,  the  France  of  Louis  XIV,  the 


532     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

France  of  Napoleon,  the  Russia  of  the  late  Czar, 
and  now  against  the  Germany  of  William  II. 
The  France  of  the  great  Napoleon,  in  attempting 
to  complete  the  commercial  isolation  of  England 
by  compelling  Russia  to  close  her  ports  to  her, 
buried  herself  in  snow  and  ice  on  the  way  back 
from  Moscow,  and  delivered  herself  up  com- 
pletely a  little  later  at  Waterloo.  That  was 
the  nearest  to  success  of  any  attempt  to  break 
through  the  doctrine  of  the  balance  of  power. 

In  the  year  800  A.  D.  the  Catholic  Church, 
which  took  over  the  Roman  supremacy  to  trans- 
late it  into  a  spiritual  empire,  accepted  a  Ger- 
man Emperor,  Charlemagne,  as  her  man-at-arms. 
One  hundred  and  fifty  years  later  she  accepted 
still  another,  Otto  I.  This  partnership  was  called 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  It  has  been  noted,  but 
is  still  misunderstood,  that  the  difference  between 
the  Catholic  Church  before  and  after  the  Refor- 
mation was  very  marked.  The  Catholic  Church 
claimed  to  be  not  only  a  system  of  belief  but  a 
system  of  government.  Infallibility  was  to  in- 
clude secular  as  well  as  religious  matters,  and  the 
church  strove  to  rule  as  a  secular  emperor  and  as 
a  spiritual  tyrant.  To-day  Roman  Catholicism 
is  a  sect,  one  among  many;  Roman  Catholics 
themselves  would  be  the  last  to  consent  to  any 
temporal  universal  power. 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    533 

The  Protestants,  too,  were  at  first  inclined  to 
the  methods  of  Rome.  Luther  teaches  intoler- 
ance, and  Calvin  burns  a  heretic  and  writes  in 
favor  of  the  doctrine:  Jure  gladii  coercendos  esse 
hereticos.  The  real  reformation  only  came  when 
we  had  reformed  the  reformers,  but  it  was  that 
spiritual  and  political  legacy  from  Rome  that 
the  Teuton  world,  including  ourselves,  fought 
to  nullify. 

There  was  no  successful  revolt  against  this 
curious  spiritual  Csesarism  until  the  son  of  a 
Saxon  miner  named  Luther  married  out  of 
monkdom,  burnt  the  Pope's  commands  on  a  bon- 
fire, and  plunged  all  Europe  first  into  a  peasants' 
wrar,  followed  by  a  dividing  of  Europe  between 
a  Protestant  union  and  a  Catholic  league,  and 
then  a  thirty  years'  war,  which  destroyed  two 
thirds  of  the  population  of  what  is  now  Germany. 
After  three  hundred  years  of  disunion  and 
hatreds,  Prussia  united  their  country  by  a  cement 
of  blood  and  iron,  and  in  the  last  forty  years  has 
made  out  of  her  the  most  powerful  nation  on  the 
continent  of  Europe. 

It  is  only  very  lately  that  any  of  us  have  real- 
ized what  has  happened.  So  little  attention  has 
been  paid  to  the  matter  that  there  is  no  sufficient 
and  worthy  history  of  Germany  in  English. 
More  than  we  realize,  Germany  is  a  new  factor 


534     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

in  politics,  a  new  rival  in  commerce,  a  new 
knight  in  the  tournament  lists.  This  accounts, 
in  no  small  degree,  for  the  uneasiness  Germany 
causes  in  the  world. 

Forty  years  ago  Germany  was  known  to  a 
few  students  as  having  supplied  us  with  music, 
mythology,  and  a  certain  amount  of  enchanting 
literature;  scholarship  along  certain  lines;  and 
work  in  philosophy  that  a  few  in  America  and  in 
England  were  studying.  As  a  knight  in  shining 
armor,  demanding  a  place  at  the  council-board 
of  nations,  and  ready  to  resent  any  passing  over 
of  her  claims  to  recognition  in  the  discussion  and 
settlement  of  international  politics,  she  is  a  new- 
comer. 

One  of  the  chief  causes  for  the  restlessness, 
particularly  in  England,  the  heart  of  the  great- 
est empire  in  the  world,  is  that  this  new-comer 
must  be  made  room  for  at  the  table,  received 
with  courtesy,  and  consulted.  Another  individ- 
ual has  married  into  the  family,  and  must  grad- 
ually find  her  place  there.  Of  all  nations  in 
the  world,  England  is  the  slowest  to  make  new 
friends  and  acquaintances,  and  easily  the  most 
awkward  in  doing  so.  She  is  a  good  friend  when 
you  know  her,  but  with  the  most  abominable 
manners  to  strangers. 

The  Englishman,  for  example,  pops  into  his 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     535 

club  to  escape  the  world,  not  to  seek  it  there. 
The  English  club  and  the  English  home  are 
primarily  for  seclusion,  not  for  companionship, 
and  this  characteristic  alone  is  wofully  hard  for 
the  stranger  to  understand.  To  the  gregarious 
German,  priding  himself  upon  Gemuthlichkeit, 
loving  reunions,  restaurants,  his  Stammtisch, 
formal  and  punctilious  in  his  politeness,  unused 
to  the  ways  of  the  world,  but  yet  convinced  that 
he  is  now  a  great  man  politically  and  commer- 
cially, the  Englishman  is  not  only  an  enigma  but 
an  insult.  I  am  criticising  neither.  I  have  re- 
ceived unbounded  hospitality  and  friendliness 
from  both.  I  have  ridden,  fought,  drunk,  trav- 
elled, and  lived  with  both,  but  for  that  very 
reason  I  understand  how  horribly  and  continu- 
ally they  rub  one  another  the  wrong  way. 

In  the  fundamental  matter  of  morals  the  Ger- 
man looks  upon  the  Englishman  as  a  hypocrite, 
and  the  Englishman  looks  upon  the  German  as 
rather  unpolished  and  undignified.  Berlin  is 
open  all  night,  London  closes  at  half -past  twelve. 
The  British  Sunday  is  a  gloomy  suppression  of 
vitality,  touched  up  here  and  there  with  preach- 
ing and  hymn-singing,  and  fringed  with  sur- 
reptitious golf ;  the  German  Sunday  is  a  national 
fair,  with  a  blossoming  of  all  kinds  of  amuse- 
ments, deluged  with  beer,  and  attended  by 


536     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

whole  families  as  their  only  relaxation  during  the 
week. 

The  German  licenses  vice,  lotteries,  and  gam- 
bling; the  Englishman  refuses  to  recognize  the 
existence  of  any  of  the  three.  The  German  does 
not  understand  the  Englishman's  point  of  view 
in  these  matters,  which  is  that,  though  he  knows 
these  things  to  exist,  and  that  he  is  no  better  in 
actual  practice  than  other  men,  he  refuses  to 
accept  these  as  his  ideal.  He  denounces  and 
passes  judgment  upon,  and  punishes  men  and 
women,  who  go  too  far  in  their  appreciation  and 
practice  of  apolausticism  as  a  philosophy  of  life. 
He  might  have  run  away  from  danger  himself, 
but  he  none  the  less  scorns  the  man  who  did  so. 
The  shipwreck,  the  fire,  the  test  of  moral  courage 
and  endurance,  may  have  found  him  a  coward, 
or  weak,  or  a  deserter,  but  he  holds  that  he  must 
none  the  less  measure  the  coward,  the  weakling, 
and  the  deserter,  not  by  his  own  possible  weak- 
ness if  put  to  the  same  tests,  but  by  his  ideal  of 
a  courageous  and  straightforward  Englishman. 
I  agree  with  him  wholly  and  heartily.  If  our 
sympathy  is  to  go  out  on  every  occasion,  to  the 
man  who  failed  to  come  up  to  the  mark  of  noble 
manhood,  just  because  we  feel  that  we  might 
under  like  circumstances  have  failed  too,  then  we 
give  up  the  code  of  honor  altogether,  and  our 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     5:37 

ideals  droop  to  the  level  from  which  we  fight 
and  pray  to  be  preserved. 

We  pass  judgment  upon  the  coward,  upon  the 
failure,  upon  the  man  who  has  not  mastered  his 
life  and  life  itself,  unhesitatingly.  It  is  hard  to 
do,  it  looks  as  though  one  were  without  pity  and 
without  sympathy.  Not  so;  it  is  because  we  have 
great  sympathy,  and  I  hope  unending  pity,  and 
a  growing  charity,  and  constant  willingness  to 
lend  a  hand;  but  to  condone  failure  is  to  com- 
mit the  selfish  and  unpardonable  cowardice  of 
not  judging  another  that  you  may  not  be  forced 
to  judge  yourself  too  harshly.  That  is  far  from 
being  hypocrisy.  Indeed,  in  these  days  it  is  one 
of  the  hardest  things  to  do,  so  fast  are  we  level- 
ling down  socially  and  politically  and  even 
morally.  It  looks  like  an  assumption  of  supe- 
riority when,  God  knows,  it  is  only  a  timorous 
attempt  on  our  part  not  to  lose  our  grip  on  the 
ideals  that  help  to  keep  us  out  of  the  dust  and 
the  mud.  But  he  who  lets  others  off  lightly  in 
order  that  he  may  not  be  thought  to  have  too 
high  a  standard  himself,  or  because  he  fears  that 
he  may  one  day  fail  himself,  such  a  one  is  the 
coward  of  cowards,  the  candidate  for  the  lowest 
place  in  hell;  and  well  he  deserves  it,  for  he 
helps  to  lower  the  standard  of  manhood,  and  he 
tarnishes  the  shield  of  honor  of  the  whole  race. 
Let  them  call  us  hypocrites  till  they  strangle 


538     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

doing  so,  for  when  we  lower  our  standards  be- 
cause we  fear  that  we  cannot  live  up  to  them 
ourselves,  all  will  be  lost.  To  be  mild  with  other 
men,  because  we  distrust  ourselves,  is  a  poison- 
ous sympathy  that  rots  away  the  life  of  him  who 
receives  it,  and  of  him  who  gives  it,  and  ends  in 
a  slobbering  charity  which  must  finally  protect 
itself  by  tyranny  and  cruelty.  Not  infrequently 
in  dealing  with  individuals  and  with  subject 
nations  it  is  senseless  cruelty  to  be  over-kind. 

This  sneer  of  Saxon  hypocrisy,  of  "Perfide 
Albion,"  is  seldom  explained  to  other  people  by 
men  of  our  race,  and  we  Americans  and  English- 
men have  taken  little  pains  to  make  it  clear. 
We  should  not  be  surprised,  therefore,  if  we  are 
misunderstood.  We  have  been  easily  first  so 
long  that  we  have  neglected  the  explanation  or 
the  defence  of  ourselves  to  others. 

The  Germans,  too,  have  something  of  the 
same  indifference.  A  most  sympathetic  observer 
of  German  manners  and  customs,  and  a  man  for 
whose  honesty  and  gentleness  I  have  the  highest 
esteem,  Pere  Didon,  remarked  of  the  Germans: 
"J'ai  essay  e  maintes  fois  de  decouvrir  chez  1'Al- 
lemand  une  sympathie  quelconque  pour  d'autres 
nations;  je  n'y  ai  pas  reussi." 

I  call  attention  again  to  the  important  point, 
that  it  has  been  difficult  to  manufacture  an  all- 
round  German  patriotism.  As  a  consequence 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    539 

patriotism  in  Germany  is  more  than  a  sentiment, 
it  is  a  theory,  a  doctrine,  a  theme  to  which 
statesmen,  philosophers  and  poets,  and  rulers 
devote  their  energies.  The  German  looks  upon 
his  nation  not  only  as  a  people,  but  as  a  race, 
almost  as  a  formal  religion;  hence  perhaps  his 
hatred  of  the  Jew  and  the  Slav,  and  his  difficul- 
ties with  all  foreign  peoples  within  his  borders. 
In  order  to  build  up  his  patriotism  the  German 
has  been  taught  systematically  to  dislike  first 
the  Austrians,  then  the  French,  now  the  English ; 
and  let  not  the  American  suppose  that  he  likes 
him  any  better,  for  he  does  not.  This  patriotism, 
once  developed,  was  drawn  on  for  funds  for  an 
army,  then  for  a  navy.  At  the  present  time 
there  must  be  some  explanation  offered,  and  the 
explanation  is  fear  of  England,  dislike  of  British 
arrogance.  In  one  of  his  latest  speeches  the 
Kaiser  said:  "We  need  this  fleet  to  protect  our- 
selves from  arrogance";  that,  of  course,  means, 
always  means,  British  arrogance. 

From  the  moment  a  child  goes  to  school,  by 
pictures  on  the  walls,  by  an  indirect  teaching  of 
history  and  geography,  he  is  led  on  discreetly  to 
find  England  in  Germany's  way.  At  the  present 
writing  German  school  children,  and  German 
students,  and  German  recruits  are  imbued  with 
the  idea  that  Germany's  relations  with  England 
are  in  some  sort  an  armistice.  This  poisonous 


540     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

teaching  of  patriotism  has  produced  wide-spread 
enmity  of  feeling  among  the  innocent,  but  this 
enmity  has  built  the  navy.  And  now  that  in 
certain  quarters  it  is  found  desirable  to  soothe 
and  calm  this  feeling,  it  proves  to  be  more  diffi- 
cult to  subdue  than  it  was  to  arouse.  The  mon- 
ster that  Frankenstein  called  up  devours  its  own 
creator.  Now  that  England  can  no  longer  be 
the  enemy,  because  Germany's  greatest  present 
and  future  danger  is  from  the  Slav  races,  there 
are  evidences  that  the  German  state  is  teaching 
the  dog  not  to  bark  at  England  any  more. 

Germany  has  not  neglected  England,  but  of 
late  she  has  paid  her  the  wrong  kind  of  attention. 
Erasmus,  the  scholar-rapier,  as  Luther  was  the 
hammer,  of  the  Reformation,  visits  England  and 
writes:  "Above  all,  speak  no  evil  of  England 
to  them.  They  are  proud  of  their  country  above 
all  nations  in  the  world,  as  they  have  good  reason 
to  be." 

Kant,  the  German  philosopher,  on  his  clock- 
like  rounds  in  Konigsberg,  knew  something  of 
England  and  writes  of  her:  "Die  englische  Na- 
tion, als  Volk  betrachtet,  ist  das  schatzbarste 
Ganze  von  Menschen  im  Verhaltniss  unter  ein- 
ander;  aber  als  Staat  gegen  fremde  Staaten  der 
verderblichste,  gewaltsamste,  herrschslichtigste 
und  kriegerregendste  von  alien." 

("The  English,  as  a  people,  in  their  relations 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     541 

to  one  another  are  a  most  estimable  body  of  men, 
but  as  a  nation  in  their  relations  with  other 
nations  they  are  of  all  people  the  most  perni- 
cious, the  most  violent,  the  most  domineering, 
and  the  most  strife-provoking.") 

Another  German,  something  of  a  scholar, 
something  of  a  philosopher,  but  a  wit  and  a 
singer,  Heine,  visited  England,  and,  as  he  handed 
a  fee  to  the  verger  who  had  shown  him  around 
Westminster  Abbey,  said:  "I  would  willingly 
give  you  twice  as  much  if  the  collection  were 
complete!"  To  him  Napoleon  defeated  was  a 
greater  man  than  the  "starched,  stiff"  Welling- 
ton; and  the  "potatoes  boiled  in  water  and  put 
on  the  table  as  God  made  them"  and  the  "coun- 
try with  three  hundred  religions  and  only  one 
sauce"  were  a  constant  source  of  amused  annoy- 
ance. The  German  professors  and  students, 
who  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century 
lauded  English  constitutional  liberty  to  the  skies 
and  made  a  god  of  Burke,  have  soured  toward 
England  since. 

"What  does  Germany  want?"  asked  Thiers 
of  the  German  historian  Ranke.  "To  destroy 
the  work  of  Louis  XIV,"  was  the  reply.  Pro- 
fessor Treitschke  and  his  successor  in  the  chair 
of  history  at  Berlin,  Professor  Delbruck,  have 
been  outspoken  in  their  denunciation  of  England. 


542     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

Mommsen,  Schmoller,  Schiemann,  Zorn  of  Bonn, 
and  his  colleague  there,  von  Dirksen,  Professor 
Dietrich  Schaefer,  Professor  Adolph  Wagner, 
and  many  other  scholars  have  been,  and  are,  poli- 
ticians in  Germany,  and  none  of  them  friendly  to 
England,  to  France,  or  to  America.  Bismarck 
himself  remarked  of  these  gentlemen:  "Die 
Politik  ist  keine  Wissenschaft,  wie  viele  der 
Herren  Professoren  sich  einbilden,  sie  ist  eben 
eine  Kunst"  ("Politics  is  not  a  science  as  many 
professorial  gentlemen  fancy;  it  is  an  art"); 
and  again:  "Die  Arbeit  des  Diplomaten,  seine 
Aufgabe,  besteht  in  dem  praktischen  Verkehr 
mit  Menschen,  in  der  richtigen  Beurtheilung  von 
dem,  was  andere  Leute  unter  gewissen  IJm- 
standen  wahrscheinlich  thun  werden,  in  der 
richtigen  Erkennung  der  Absichten  anderer;  in 
der  richtigen  Darstellung  der  seinigen"  ("The 
work  of  the  diplomat,  his  chief  task,  indeed, 
consists  in  the  practical  dealing  with  men,  in 
his  sound  judgment  of  what  other  people  would 
probably  do  under  certain  circumstances,  in  his 
correct  interpretation  of  the  intentions  and  pur- 
poses of  other  people,  and  in  the  accurate  pres- 
entation of  his  own"). 

He  began  his  political  life  in  1862  with  the 
phrase:  "Die  grossen  Fragen  kb'nnen  durrh 
Reden  und  Majoritatsbeschliisse  nicht  entschie- 


den  werden,  sondern  durch  Eisen  und  Blut" 
("The  great  questions  cannot  be  decided  by 
speeches  and  the  decisions  of  majorities,  but  by 
iron  and  blood"). 

It  is  a  well-known  professor  who  writes :  "  Denn 
die  einzige  Gefahr,  die  den  Frieden  in  Europa 
und  damit  den  Weltfrieden  droht,  liegt  in  den 
krankhaften  Ubertreibungen  des  englischen  Im- 
perialismus"  ("The  only  danger  to  the  peace  of 
Europe,  and  that  includes  the  peace  of  the  world, 
lies  in  the  morbid  excesses  of  British  imperial- 
ism"). Another  quotation  from  the  same  pen 
reads:  "So  far  as  other  perils  to  the  British 
Empire  are  concerned,  they  are  of  much  the 
same  character,  but  the  empire  suffers  too  from 
the  selfish  policy  of  English  business,  which,  in 
order  to  create  big  business,  does  not  hesitate  to 
interfere  with  the  declared  policy  of  the  state." 
Then  follows  the  statement  that  English  traders 
have  smuggled  guns  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 

Professor  Zorn  writes:  "The  possibility  that 
while  our  Emperor  was  seeking  rest  and  refresh- 
ment in  Norwegian  waters  and  enjoying  the 
beauties  of  the  Norwegian  landscape,  English 
ships  were  lying  in  readiness  to  annihilate  Ger- 
man ships."  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  such 
lunatic  lies  can  come  from  the  pen  of  a  pro- 
fessor in  good  standing. 


544     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

"Ohne  zu  iibertreiben  kann  man  sagen  dass 
heute  nur  der  allerkleinste  Teil  der  deutschen 
Presse  geneigt  ist,  den  Englandern  Gerech- 
tigkeit  widerfahren  zu  lassen,  bei  Behandlimg 
allgemeiner  Fragen  sich  auch  einmal  auf  den 
englischen  Standpunkt  der  Betrachtung  wenig- 
stens  zeitweise  zu  versetzen.  England  ist  fur 
viele  'der'  Feind  an  sich,  und  ein  Feind  dem 
man  keine  Riicksichten  schuldet." 

("Tt  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  nowadays 
only  the  tiniest  minority  of  the  German  press 
is  inclined  to  do  justice  to  the  English  by  at 
least  occasionally  looking  at  questions  from  the 
British  point  of  view.  England  is  for  many  the 
enemy  of  enemies  and  an  enemy  to  whom  no 
consideration  is  due.")  Thus  writes  one  of  the 
cooler  heads  in  the  Kolnische  Zeitung. 

Doctor  Herbert  von  Dirksen,  of  Bonn,  writing 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  says:  "By  what  right 
does  America  attempt  to  check  the  strongest 
expansion  policy  of  all  other  nations  of  the 
earth?"  During  the  Boer  war  Germany  was 
showered  with  post-cards  and  caricatures  of  the 
English.  British  soldiers  with  donkey  heads 
marched  past  Queen  Victoria  and  the  Prince  of 
Wales ;  the  venerable  Queen  Victoria  is  pictured 
plucking  the  tail  feathers  from  an  ostrich  which 
she  holds  across  her  knees;  the  three  generals. 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    545 

Methuen,  Buller,  and  Gatacre,  take  off  their 
faces  to  discover  the  heads  of  an  ass,  a  sheep,  and 
a  cow;  Chamberlain  is  depicted  as  the  instigator 
of  the  war,  with  his  pockets  and  hands  full  of 
African  shares;  a  parade  of  the  stock-exchange 
volunteers  depicts  them  as  all  Jews,  with  the 
Prince  of  Wales  as  a  Jew  reviewing  them;  the 
Prince  of  Wales  is  pictured  surrounded  by  vul- 
gar women,  who  ask,  "Say,  Fatty,  you  are  not 
going  to  South  Africa?"  to  which  the  Prince 
replies,  "No,  I  must  stay  here  to  take  care  of  the 
widows  and  orphans!"  English  soldiers  are  de- 
picted in  the  act  of  hitting  and  kicking  women 
and  children. 

In  the  war  with  Denmark  in  1864  the  Austrian 
navy  met  with  a  disaster  at  sea.  A  German 
publicist  even  then  wrote:  "I  was  grieved  at 
the  demonstrations  of  joy  about  this  in  the 
English  Parliament.  It  was  not  sympathy  with 
the  Danes  but  petty  spite  and  malice  at  the 
defeat  of  a  foreign  fleet.  But  at  the  same 
time  it  is  a  consolatory  proof  that  the  English 
are  afraid  of  the  future  German  navy."  This 
quotation  is  interesting  as  showing  how  far  back 
the  quarrel  dates. 

It  would  be  merely  a  question  of  how  much 
time  one  cares  to  devote  to  scissors  and  paste  to 
multiply  these  examples  of  Germany's  journal- 


546     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

istic  and  professorial  state  of  mind.  It  is  unfort- 
unate that  some  of  this  writing  in  the  press  is 
done  by  those  who  are  often  in  consultation  with 
the  Emperor,  and  on  some  political  subjects  his 
advisers.  I  have  suggested  in  another  chapter 
that  Germany  suffers  far  more  from  the  theoret- 
ical and  book-learned  gentlemen  who  surround 
the  Emperor  than  from  his  indiscretions.  In 
more  than  one  instance  his  indiscretions  were 
due  to  their  blundering.  Their  knowledge  of 
books  far  surpasses  their  knowledge  of  men,  and 
nothing  can  be  more  dangerous  to  any  nation 
than  to  be  counselled  and  guided  by  pedants 
rather  than  by  men  of  the  world.  This  project- 
ing a  world  from  the  gaseous  elements  of  one's 
own  cranium  and  dealing  with  that  world,  in- 
stead of  the  world  that  exists,  is  a  danger  to 
everybody  concerned. 

"  Bedauernswert  sei  es  allerdings,  dass  wir  in 
unserem  politischen  Leben  nicht  mit  gentlemen 
zu  thun  haben,  dies  sei  aber  ein  Begriff  der  uns 
uberhaupt  abgehe,"  writes  Prince  Hohenlohe 
in  his  memoirs.  ("It  is  of  all  things  most  to  be 
regretted  that  in  our  political  life  we  do  not  have 
gentlemen  to  deal  with,  but  this  is  a  conception 
of  which  we  are  totally  deficient.") 

A  daring  colonial  secretary,  speaking  in  the 
Reichstag  of  certain  scandals  in  the  German 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     54? 

colonies,  said  bluntly:  "A  reprehensible  caste 
feeling  has  grown  up  in  our  colonies,  the  concep- 
tion of  a  gentleman  being  in  England  different 
from  that  in  Germany." 

When  Lord  Haldane  came  to  Berlin,  on  his 
mission  to  discover  if  possible  a  working  basis 
for  more  friendly  relations  between  the  two 
countries,  his  eyes  were  greeted  in  the  windows 
of  every  book-shop  with  books  and  pamphlets 
with  such  titles  as  "Krieg  oder  Frieden  mit  Eng- 
land," "Das  Perfide  Albion,"  "Deutschland  und 
der  Islam,"  "1st  England  kriegslustig,"  "Deuts- 
chland sei  Wach,"  "England's  Weltherrschaft 
und  die  deutsche  Luxusflotte,"  "John  Bull  und 
wir,"  and  a  long  list  of  others,  all  written  and 
advertised  to  keep  alive  in  the  German  people  a 
sense  of  their  natural  antagonism  to  England. 

During  the  last  year  the  "Letters  of  Berg- 
mann"  brought  up  again  the  controversy,  that 
should  have  been  left  to  die,  over  the  treatment 
of  the  Emperor  Friedrich  by  an  English  surgeon. 

In  discussing  Senator  Lodge's  resolution  before 
the  United  States  Senate,  on  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, the  German  press  spoke  of  us  as  "hirnver- 
brannte  Yankees,"  "bornierte  Yankeegehirne " 
("crazy  Yankees,"  "provincial  Yankee  intel- 
lects"); and  the  words  "Dollarika,"  "Dollarei," 
and  "Dollarman"  are  further  malicious  expres- 


548     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

sions  of  their  envy,  frequently  used.  The  Ger- 
mans are  persistently  taught  that  there  are 
neither  scholars  nor  students  in  America  or  in 
England.  One  worthy  writes:  "Die  Englander 
lernen  nichts.  Der  Sport  lasst  ihnen  keine 
Zeit  dazu.  Man  ist  hinterher  auch  zu  mtide." 

I  am  always  very  glad,  when  I  happen  to  be 
in  Europe,  that  I  belong  to  a  nation  that  can 
afford  to  take  these  flings  with  the  greatest  good- 
humor.  As  the  burly  soldier  replied  when  ques- 
tioned in  court  as  to  why  he  allowed  his  small 
wife  to  beat  him:  "It  pleases  her  and  it  don't 
hurt  I." 

This  struggle  for  recognition  as  a  great  nation, 
to  be  received  on  equal  terms  by  the  rest  of  us, 
has  upset  the  nerves  of  certain  classes  in  Ger- 
many, and  among  them  the  un travelled  and 
small-town-dwelling  professor. 

I  am  a  craftsman  in  letters  myself,  in  a  small 
way,  but  I  am  no  believer  that  books  are  the 
only  key  to  life,  or  the  only  way  to  find  a  solution 
for  its  riddles  and  problems.  Life  is  language, 
and  books  only  the  dictionaries;  men  are  the 
text,  books  only  the  commentaries.  Books  are 
only  good  as  a  filter  for  actual  experiences.  A 
man  must  have  a  rich  and  varied  experience  of 
men  and  women  before  he  can  use  books  to  ad- 
vantage. Life  is  varied,  men  and  women  many, 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     549 

while  the  individual  life  is  short;  wise  men  read 
books,  therefore,  to  enrich  their  experience,  not 
merely  as  the  pedant  does,  to  garner  facts. 
"  J'etudie  les  livres  en  attendant  que  j'etudie  les 
hommes,"  writes  Voltaire.  "Books  are  good 
enough  in  their  own  way,  but  they  are  a  mighty 
bloodless  substitute  for  life,"  writes  Stevenson. 

Montgolfier  sees  a  woman's  skirt  drying  and 
notices  that  the  hot  air  fills  it  and  lifts  it,  and 
this  gives  him  the  idea  for  a  balloon. 

Denis  Papin  sees  the  cover  lifted  from  a  pot 
by  the  steam,  and  there  follow  the  myriad  in- 
ventions in  which  steam  is  the  driving  power. 

Newton,  dozing  under  an  apple-tree,  is  hit  on 
the  head  by  a  falling  apple,  and  there  follows 
the  law  of  gravitation. 

Franklin  flies  a  kite,  and  a  shock  of  electricity 
starts  him  upon  the  road  to  his  discoveries. 

Archimedes  in  his  bath  notices  that  his  body 
seems  to  grow  lighter,  and  there  follows  the 
great  law  which  bears  his  name. 

These  are  the  foundation-stones  upon  which 
the  whole  house  of  science  is  built,  and  no  one 
of  them  was  dug  out  of  a  book.  Charlemagne 
could  not  read,  and  Napoleon,  when  he  left  school 
for  Paris,  carried  the  recommendation  from  his 
master  that  he  might  possibly  become  a  fair 
officer  of  marines,  but  nothing  more!  A  capital 


550     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

example  of  the  ability  of  the  man  of  books  to 
measure  the  abilities  of  the  man  of  the  world. 

Reading  and  writing  are  modern  accomplish- 
ments, and  we  grossly  exaggerate  their  impor- 
tance as  man-makers.  That,  it  has  always  been 
my  contention,  is  the  fatal  fallacy  of  modern 
education,  and  you  may  see  it  carried  to  its 
extreme  in  Germany,  for  men  who  have  not 
lived  broadly  are  merely  hampered  by  books. 
It  is  as  though  one  studied  a  primer  with  an 
etymological  dictionary  at  his  side.  Germans 
are  renowned  writers  of  commentaries,  but  you 
cannot  deal  with  men  and  with  life  by  the  aid  of 
commentaries.  Exegesis  solves  no  international 
quarrels,  and  the  mastery  of  men  is  not  gained 
with  dictionaries  and  grammars. 

We  are  all  prone  to  forget  the  end  in  the  means, 
for  the  end  is  far  away  and  the  means  right  under 
our  noses.  We  all  recognize,  when  we  are  pulled 
up  short  and  made  to  think,  that,  after  all,  the 
arts  and  letters,  religion  and  philosophy  and 
statecraft,  are  for  one  ultimate  purpose,  which  is 
to  develop  the  complete  man.  Everything  must 
be  measured  by  its  man-making  power.  Ideas 
that  do  not  grow  men  are  sterile  seed.  Men  who 
do  not  move  other  men  to  action  and  to  growth 
are  not  to  be  excused  because  they  stir  men  to 
the  merely  pleasant  tickling  of  thinking  lazily 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    551 

and  feeling  softly.  Thus  Lincoln  was  a  greater 
man  than  Emerson;  Bismarck  a  greater  than 
Lessing;  Cromwell  a  greater  than  Bunyan;  Na- 
poleon a  greater  than  Corneille  and  Racine; 
Pericles  greater  than  Plato;  and  Caesar  greater 
than  Virgil. 

The  man  who  only  makes  maps  for  the  mind 
is  only  half  a  man,  until  his  thinking,  his  influ- 
ence, his  dreams  and  enthusiasms  take  on  the 
potency  of  a  man  and  come  into  action.  Even  if 
men  of  action  do  evil,  as  some  of  those  I  mention 
have  done,  they  have  translated  theories  into  pal- 
pable things  that  permit  men  to  judge  whether 
they  be  good  or  bad;  and  the  really  great  artists, 
thinkers,  and  saints  are  as  fertile  as  though 
they  were  female,  and  gave  birth  to  living 
things.  Their  thinking  is  a  form  of  action.  The 
real  test  of  successful  organization  is  the  thor- 
oughness of  the  thinking  behind  it;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  only  test  of  thinking  is  the  success  of 
the  thought  in  actual  execution,  and  jthe  Germans 
often  take  this  too  much  for  granted.  We  really 
know  and  hold  as  an  inalienable  intellectual  pos- 
session only  what  we  have  gained  by  our  own 
effort,  and  with  a  certain  degree  of  actual  exer- 
tion. People  who  have  never  worked  out  their 
own  salvation  always  join,  at  last,  that  large  class 
in  the  body  politic  who  don't  know  what  they 


552     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

want,  and  who  will  never  be  happy  till  they 
get  it. 

When  it  comes  to  dealing  with  inanimate 
things,  books  of  rules  are  invaluable.  Hence,  in 
chemistry,  physics,  archaeology,  philology,  exe- 
gesis, the  Germans  have  forged  ahead;  their 
intellectual  street-cleaning  is  unsurpassed;  but 
the  ship  of  state  needs  not  only  men  to  take  ob- 
servations and  to  read  charts,  but  men  to  trim 
the  sails  to  the  fitful  breezes,  the  blustering 
winds,  the  tempests  and  the  changing  currents 
of  life.  They  must  know,  too,  the  methods,  the 
manners,  the  habits  of  other  men  who  sail  the 
seas  of  life.  It  is  just  here  that  the  German  fails; 
he  lacks  the  confidence  of  experience,  and  bursts 
into  bluster  and  bravado.  He  is  a  believer  in 
vicarious  experience,  and  is  as  little  likely  to  be 
saved  by  it,  in  this  world  at  least,  as  he  is  by 
vicarious  sacrifice. 

His  imagination  does  not  make  allowances  for 
either  England  or  America.  He  does  not  see, 
for  example,  that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  not 
open  for  discussion  for  the  simple  reason  that 
America  has  announced  it  as  American  policy; 
just  as  Prussia  took  part  three  times  in  the  dis- 
memberment of  Poland;  just  as  Prussia  pounced 
upon  Silesia;  just  as  Germany  took  Alsace-- 
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein  and  Frankfort,  and 
held  the  ring  while  Austria-Hungary  bagged 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    553 

Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  and  by  the  word  of 
her  Emperor,  promised  to  do  the  same  thing 
for  Russia,  when  Japan  declared  war  against 
her.  We  have  decided  that  we  will  have  no 
European  sovereignty  in  South  America,  and 
this  side  war,  that  is  the  end  of  the  matter,  call 
it  the  Monroe  Doctrine  or  what  you  will.  It 
only  makes  for  uneasiness  and  bad  temper  to 
discuss  it.  It  is  the  national  American  policy. 
It  may  be  right  or  wrong  theoretically,  but  in- 
ternational law  has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  The 
German  professors  who  discuss  it  from  that 
stand-point,  are  beating  the  air  and  raising  a 
dust  in  the  world's  international  drawing-room. 
This  German  mania  for  translating  facts  back 
into  philosophy  and  then  dancing  through  a  dis- 
cussion of  theories  is  not  understood,  much  less 
appreciated,  by  the  rest  of  the  world.  We  can 
never  get  on  if  we  are  to  introduce  the  discussion 
of  the  lines  of  every  new  battle-ship  by  argu- 
ments as  to  the  sea-worthiness  of  the  ark.  Those 
of  us  who  control  a  quarter  of  the  habitable 
globe,  and  the  inhabitants  thereof,  are  much  too 
busy  to  discuss  the  legal  aspects  of  the  land- 
grabbing  of  the  Pharaohs.  Geography  is  not 
metaphysics,  but  it  is  wof ully  hard  for  the  pro- 
fessorial mind  to  grasp  this. 

"Given  a  mouse's  tail,  and  he  will  guess 
With  metaphysic  quickness  at  the  mouse." 


554     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

In  much  the  same  way  German  statesmen  and 
the  German  press  do  not  understand,  or  do  not 
care  to  understand,  that  British  statesmen  when 
they  speak  in  the  House  of  Commons,  or  when 
they  go  to  the  country  asking  increased  appro- 
priations for  the  navy,  must  give  some  reason 
for  their  request.  There  is  only  one  reason,  and 
that  is  that  there  is  a  growing  navy  across  the 
North  Sea,  which,  whether  now  it  is  or  is  not  a 
menace,  may  be  a  menace  to  their  ship-fed  island, 
and  they  must  have  ships  and  men  and  guns 
enough  to  guard  the  sea-lanes  which  their  food- 
laden  ships  must  sail  through. 

They  may  be  awkward  sometimes  in  their 
expression  of  this  self-evident  fact,  they  may  call 
their  own  fleet  a  necessity  and  the  other  fleet  a 
luxury,  but  that  is  a  negligible  question  of  verbal 
manners;  the  fact  remains  that  their  fleet  is,  and 
all  the  world  knows  it  is,  and  it  is  laughable  to 
discuss  it,  the  prime  necessity  of  their  existence. 

As  long  as  we  Christians  have  given  up  any 
shred  of  belief  in  Christian  ethics,  as  applicable 
to  international  disputes,  we  must  live  by  the 
law  of  the  strongest.  We  do  not  bless  the  poor 
in  spirit,  but  the  self-confident;  we  do  not  bless 
the  meek,  but  the  proud;  we  do  not  bless  the 
peace-makers,  but  those  who  urge  us  to  prepare 
for  war;  we  do  not  bless  the  reviled  and  the 
persecuted  and  the  slandered,  but  those  who 


555 

revolt  against  injustice  and  tyranny;  we  do  not 
approve  the  cutting  off  of  the  right  hand,  but 
admire  the  mailed  fist;  and  it  is  only  adding  to 
the  confusion  to  raise  millions  for  war  ourselves, 
and  then  to  present  a  handsomely  bound  copy 
of  the  Beatitudes  to  our  rivals. 

I  shall  be  wantonly  misunderstood  if  these 
reflections  be  taken  as  a  criticism  of  Germany. 
This  situation  involves  Germany  in  censure  no 
more  than  other  nations.  It  is  only  that  Ger- 
many shows  herself  to  be  somewhat  childish  and 
peevishly  provincial,  in  girding  at  an  unchange- 
able situation,  either  in  South  America  or  in  the 
North  Sea. 

This  is  not  altogether  Germany's  fault.  She 
is  suffering  from  growing  pains,  and  from  grave 
internal  unrest.  She  is  only  just  of  age  as  a 
nation,  and  her  constitution  is  so  inflexible  that 
it  is  a  constant  source  of  irritation.  She  is 
governed  by  an  autocracy,  and  the  two  strongest 
parties  numerically  in  her  Reichstag  are  the 
party  of  the  Catholics  and  the  party  of  the 
Socialists.  She  has  built  up  a  tremendous  trade 
on  borrowed  capital,  and  every  gust  of  wind  in 
the  money  market  makes  her  fidgety.  Her 
population  increases  at  the  rate  of  some  800,000 
a  year,  but  her  educational  system  produces  such 
a  surplus  of  laborers  who  wish  to  work  in  uni- 


556     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

forms,  or  in  black  coats  and  stiff  collars,  that 
there  is  a  dearth  of  agricultural  laborers,  and  she 
imports  700,000  Hungarians,  Poles,  Slavs,  and 
Italians  every  year  to  harvest  her  crops. 

This  same  system  of  education  has  taught 
youths  to  think  for  themselves  before  either  the 
mental  or  moral  muscles  are  tough  enough,  with 
the  result  that  she  is  the  agnostic  and  material- 
istic nation  of  Europe,  and  her  capital  the  most 
licentious  and  immoral  in  Europe. 

This  is  the  result  of  secular  education  every- 
where. Freedom  of  thought,  yes,  but  not  free- 
dom of  thought  any  more  than  freedom  of 
morals,  or  freedom  of  manners,  or  political  free- 
dom, in  extreme  youth;  that  only  makes  for 
anarchy  political,  mental,  and  moral. 

There  is  much  undigested,  not  to  say  indigest- 
ible, republicanism  about  just  now  in  China 
and  in  Portugal,  for  example;  just  as  there  are 
materialism  and  agnosticism  in  Germany  and  in 
France,  not  due  to  super-intellectualism  but  to 
juvenile  thinking.  The  Chinese  are  just  as  fit 
for  a  republic  —  an  actual  republic  is  still  a  long 
way  off  —  as  are  callow  German  youths,  and 
notoriety -loving  French  students,  for  freedom  to 
disbelieve  and  to  destroy.  No  country  can  long 
survive  a  majority  of  women  teachers  in  the 
public  schools,  together  with  no  Bible  and  no 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     557 

religious  teaching  there.  I  have  no  prejudices 
favoring  orthodoxy,  but  I  have  a  fairly  wide 
experience  which  has  given  me  one  article  of  a 
creed  that  I  would  go  to  the  stake  for,  and  that 
is  that  i  t  is  of  all  crimes  the  worst  to  give  free- 
dom political,  moral,  or  religious  to  those  who 
are  unprepared  for  it. 

Germany's  taste  in  literature,  once  so  natural 
and  healthy,  has  become  morbid,  and  Suder- 
mann  and  Gorky  and  Oscar  Wilde,  and  the  rest 
of  the  unhealthy  crew  who  swarm  about  the 
morgues,  the  dissecting-rooms,  and  the  houses  of 
assignation  of  life,  the  internuntiata  libidinum, 
the  leering  conciliatrices  of  the  dark  streets,  are 
her  favorites  now.  There  is  no  surer  sign  of 
mental  ill-health  than  a  taste  for  lowering  litera- 
ture, an  appetite  for  this  self-dissecting,  this 
complacent,  self-contemplating  form  of  intel- 
lectual exercise. 

This  is  no  heated  assault  on  German  culture. 
It  is  a  natural  phase  of  development.  Youthful 
candidates  for  worldliness  all  go  through  this 
pornocratic  stage.  'The  impudence  of  the  bawd 
is  modesty,  compared  with  that  of  the  convert," 
writes  the  Marquis  of  Halifax.  The  German 
professor  and  the  German  bourgeois  in  their 
Rake's  Progress  are  only  a  little  more  awkward, 
a  little  more  heavy-handed,  a  little  coarser  in 


558     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

speech,  than  others,  that  is  all.  The  period  of 
twenty-five  years  during  which  I  have  known 
Germany  has  developed  before  my  eyes  the  con- 
comitants of  vast  and  rapid  industrial  and  com- 
mercial progress,  and  they  are:  a  love  of  luxury, 
a  great  increase  in  gambling,  a  materialistic  tone 
of  mind,  a  wide-spread  increase  of  immorality, 
and  a  tendency  to  send  culture  to  the  mint,  and 
to  the  market-place  to  be  stamped,  so  that  it  may 
be  readily  exchanged  for  the  means  of  soft  living. 
These  internal  changes  account  to  some  extent 
for  her  restless  external  policy.  A  man's  diges- 
tion has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  color  of  the 
world  when  he  looks  at  it.  There  is  more  yellow 
in  life  from  biliousness,  than  from  the  state  of 
the  atmosphere. 

Aside  from  these  domestic  causes  there  is  no 
reason  why  Germany  should  take  a  sentimental 
or  pious  view  of  these  questions  of  international 
amity.  Her  own  history  is  development  by  war. 
"Any  war  is  a  good  war  when  it  is  undertaken 
to  increase  the  power  of  the  state,"  said  Frederick 
the  Great.  "Nur  das  Volk  wird  eine  gesicherte 
Stellung  in  der  Welt  haben,  das  von  kriegerischen 
Geiste  erfiillt  ist"  ("Only  that  nation  will  hold 
a  safe  place  in  the  world  which  is  imbued  with  a 
warlike  spirit")  writes  Germany's  great  military 
philosopher  Clausewitz. 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    559 

We  took  Cuba  and  the  Philippines;  England 
took  India,  Hong  Kong,  and  Egypt;  Japan  took 
Korea  and  southern  Manchuria;  Italy  took 
Tripoli;  France  took  Fez;  Russia  took  Finland 
and  northern  Manchuria;  Austria-Hungary  took 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina;  and  Prussia  and  Ger- 
many have  a  long  list,  including  Silesia,  Poland, 
Hanover,  and  Alsace-Lorraine.  Austria-Hun- 
gary tears  up  the  Berlin  treaty;  France,  Ger- 
many, and  Spain  tear  up  the  Algeciras  treaty; 
Italy  tears  up  the  treaty  of  Paris;  and  it  is 
part  of  the  game  that  we  should  all  hold  up  our 
hands,  avert  our  faces,  and  thank  God  that 
we  are  not  as  other  men  are,  when  these  things 
are  done.  The  justifications  of  these  actions 
are  all  of  the  most  pious  and  penitent  descrip- 
tion. We  were  forced  to  do  so,  we  say,  in  order 
to  hasten  the  bringing  in  of  our  own  specially 
patented  and  exclusive  style  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  but  outside  of  perhaps  India  and 
Egypt,  and  the  Philippines,  it  would  be  hard 
to  find  to-day  any  trace  of  the  promised  king- 
dom. Germany,  for  example,  had  nine  per  cent, 
of  Moroccan  trade,  the  total  of  Moroccan  trade 
with  all  countries  only  amounted  to  $27,500,000 
a  year,  and  she  was  compelled  to  interfere  for  the 
protection  of  her  traders,  forsooth!  The  out- 
come of  the  business,  after  an  exciting  situation 
lasting  for  months,  was  that  Germany  got  a  slice 


560     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  territory  from  France,  mostly  swamps,  which 
reaches  from  the  Congo  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean, 
and  reported  to  be,  by  her  own  engineers,  unin- 
habitable. 

It  is  the  pleasant  formula  of  polite  statesmen 
and  politicians  to  say,  that  it  is  a  pity  that  Ger- 
many came  into  the  world  competition  a  hun- 
dred years  too  late,  when  the  best  colonies  had 
been  parcelled  out  among  the  other  powers. 
This  is  a  superficial  view  of  the  case,  and  misses 
the  real  point  of  the  present  envy,  hatred,  malice, 
and  uncharitableness.  Germany  does  not  want 
colonies,  and  has  no  ability  of  the  proper  kind, 
and  no  willing  and  adventurous  population  to 
settle  them,  if  she  had.  Prussia's  dealing  with 
aborigines  is  a  subject  for  comic  opera. 

Germany  came  into  the  modern  world  as  a 
dreamer,  as  a  maker  of  melodies,  as  a  singer  of 
songs,  as  a  sort  of  post-graduate  student  in 
philosophy  and  in  theoretical,  and  later  applied 
science.  She  introduced  us  to  classical  philology, 
to  modern  methods  of  historical  research,  to  the 
comparative  study  of  ethnic  religions,  to  daring 
and  scholarly  exegesis,  to  the  study  of  the  science 
of  language.  She  discovered  Shakespeare  to  the 
English;  Eduard  Matzner  and  Eduard  Miiller, 
and  German  scholars  in  the  study  of  phonetics, 
have  written  our  English  grammars  and  ety- 
mological dictionaries  for  us,  and  helped  to  lay 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    561 

the  foundations  for  knowledge  of  our  own  lan- 
guage. Spinoza,  Kant,  Hegel,  one  need  not 
mention  more,  attempted  to  pass  beyond  the 
bounds  of  human  experience  and  to  formulate 
laws  for  the  process;  Schleiermacher,  maintain- 
ing that  Christian  faith  is  a  condition  of  devout 
feeling,  a  fact  of  inward  experience,  an  object 
which  may  be  observed  and  described,  had  an 
unbounded  influence  in  America,  and  many  are 
the  ethical  discourses  I  have  listened  to  which 
owed  more  to  Schleiermacher  than  to  their  au- 
thors. Humboldt,  Liebig,  Bunsen,  Helmholtz, 
Johannes  Miiller,  Von  Baer,  Virchow,  Koch, 
Diesel,  even  the  British  and  American  man  in  the 
street,  with  little  interest  in  such  matters,  knows 
some  of  these  names;  while  Schopenhauer  and 
Nietzsche  are  symbols  of  revolt,  whose  names 
are  flung  into  an  argument  by  many  who  only 
know  their  names,  but  who  fondly  suppose  that 
the  one  stands  for  despair  and  suicide,  and  the 
other  for  the  joy  and  unbridled  license  of  the 
strong  man. 

Reckoning  by  epochs,  it  was  only  yesterday 
that  Germany  said  to  the  world:  "No  more  of 
this!" 

"Hang  up  philosophy! 
Unless  philosophy  can  make  a  Juliet, 
Displant  a  town,  reverse  a  prince's  doom, 
It  helps  not,  it  prevails  not:  talk  no  more!" 


Of  a  sudden  our  scholar  threw  off  his  gown 
and  cap,  and  said:  "I  propose  to  play  base-ball 
and  foot-ball  with  you,  I  propose  to  have  a  hand 
in  the  material  spoils  of  life,  I  propose  to  have  a 
seat  at  the  banquet  and  to  propose  toasts  and 
to  be  toasted!"  Faust  of  a  sudden  left  his 
gloomy,  cobwebby  laboratory,  flung  a  fine  cloak 
over  his  shoulders,  stuck  a  dandy  feather  in  his 
cap,  buckled  on  a  rapier,  and  began  roistering 
with  the  best  of  us.  We  sneered  and  smiled  at 
first,  let  us  be  frank  and  admit  it.  We  did  not 
think  much  of  this  new  buck.  We  had  little 
fear  that  the  professor,  even  if  he  took  off  his 
spectacles  and  slippers  and  dressing-gown,  and 
exchanged  his  pipe  for  a  cigarette,  would  cut 
much  of  a  figure  as  a  lover.  He  was  new  to  the 
game,  we  were  old  hands  at  it,  but  the  first  thing 
we  knew  he  had  given  the  world's  mistress, 
France,  a  scolding,  and  flung  her  into  a  corner, 
a  cowering  heap  of  outraged  finery ;  and  she  has 
only  been  safe  ever  since  in  the  role  of  a  sort  of 
mistress  of  England  on  board-wages. 

A  new  cock  in  the  barn-yard  is  never  received 
with  great  cordiality.  He  must  win  his  place  and 
his  power  with  his  beak  and  his  spurs.  We  all 
of  us  had  enough  to  do  before  this  fellow  came 
along.  We  are  a  little  jealous  of  him,  we  are  all 
uneasier  because  he  is  about,  and  he  has  done  so 
well  at  our  games,  now  that  he  has  indeed  hung 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    563 

up  philosophy,  that  we  are  not  even  sure  that  it 
is  safe  to  take  him  on  in  a  serious  match.  We 
have  endeavored,  therefore,  to  keep  him  occupied 
with  his  own  neighbors,  to  whom  we  have  ex- 
tended our  best  wishes  and  our  moral  backing, 
which  is  known  as  keeping  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe. 

But  a  new  Germany  has  come  into  the  world. 
Germany  nowadays  has  a  large  class,  as  have 
the  rest  of  us,  who  belong  to  that  increasing 
number  of  extraordinary  people  who  want  money 
without  even  knowing  how  to  get  on  without  it. 
The  only  satisfactory  test  of  the  right  to  wealth 
is  the  ability  to  get  on  without  it.  One  of  mod- 
ern civilization's  most  dangerous  pitfalls  is  the 
subversive  doctrine  that  all  men  shall  have 
wealth,  even  before  they  have  proved  their 
ability  to  do  without  it.  Germany  is  gradually 
arriving  at  this  puny  stage  of  culture,  whose  be- 
ginnings may  be  said  to  date  from  that  ominous 
year  for  culture,  1492,  when  Lorenzo  di  Medici 
died  and  Columbus  discovered  America! 

During  all  this  time  statesmen  have  insisted 
that  there  is  no  good  reason  why  Germany  and 
England  should  not  be  on  good  terms;  gentle- 
men of  various  trades  and  professions  from  both 
countries,  speaking  halting  English  or  embar- 
rassed German,  as  the  case  may  be,  cross  each 


564    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

other's  boundaries,  comment  upon  the  beauties 
of  the  respective  countries,  and  overeat  them- 
selves in  ponderous  endeavors  to  appear  cordial 
and  appreciative.  Mayors  and  aldermen  swap 
stories  and  compliments  over  turtle  and  sherry, 
or  over  sauerkraut  and  Johannisberger;  bands  of 
students  visit  Oxford  or  Heidelberg,  and  there  is 
a  chorus  of  praise  of  Goethe  from  one  side,  of 
Shakespeare  from  the  other;  and  all  the  while 
there  is  an  unceasing  antiphonal  of  grimaces  and 
abuse  in  the  press.  Not  even  when  Germany 
exports  her  latest  stage  novelties  to  London,  and 
pantomimic  platitudes  are  dandled  under  colored 
lights,  does  the  turmoil  of  martial  talk  cease. 
Not  even  Teutonic  lechery,  in  the  guise  of  Rein- 
hartian  art,  dressed  in  nothing  but  silence,  and 
making  faces  at  the  British  censor  on  the  boards 
of  the  music-halls,  avails  anything. 

Of  course  all  this  is  nuts  to  the  irresponsible 
journalists,  to  the  manufacturers  of  powder, 
guns,  and  ships,  and  to  politicians  and  diplomats 
out  of  employment;  but  it  is  hard  on  the  tax- 
payer, who  has  no  dividends  from  manufacturers 
of  lethal  weapons  and  ships,  nor  from  news- 
papers, and  no  notoriety  from  the  self-imposed 
jobs  of  the  unofficial  diplomats. 

Perhaps  of  all  these  factors  the  press,  in  its 
wild  gamble  to  make  money  out  of  sensational- 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    565 

ism,  is  most  to  blame.  The  press,  for  the  sake  of 
gain,  has  soiled  and  soured  the  milk  of  human 
kindness  by  exposing  it,  carelessly  and  unceas- 
ingly, to  the  pathogenic  dangers  of  the  dust  of 
the  street  and  the  gutter.  It  is  wholly  unfitting 
and  always  demoralizing  when  the  priest,  the 
politician,  and  the  journalist  turn  their  attention 
to  private  gain.  Any  one  of  these  three  who 
makes  a  great  fortune  out  of  his  profession  is 
damned  by  that  fact  alone.  The  only  payment, 
beyond  a  living,  that  these  three  should  look 
to  is,  respect,  consideration,  and  the  honor  of 
serving  the  state  unselfishly  and  wisely.  The 
world  will  be  all  the  happier  when  there  are  no 
more  Shylocks  permitted  in  any  of  these  pro- 
fessions. 

Germany  is  autocratic,  philosophical,  and  con- 
tinental; England  is  democratic,  political,  and  in- 
sular. It  is  hopeless  to  suppose  that  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  of  one  country  will  understand 
the  other,  and,  for  this  is  the  important  point, 
it  is  wholly  unnecessary. 

We  get  on  best  and  with  least  friction  with 
people  whom  we  do  not  understand  in  the  least. 
A  man  may  have  known  and  liked  people  with 
whose  aims,  opinions,  employment,  creeds  he 
has  the  smallest  sympathy.  One  may  mention 
such  diverse  personalities  as  John  L.  Sullivan, 


566     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  prize-fighter,  Cardinal  Rampolla,  Mr.  Roose- 
velt, Doctor  Jameson,  the  Kaiser,  President 
Diaz  of  Mexico,  numerous  Jew  financiers,  Lord 
Haldane  the  scholar-statesman,  and  a  long  list  of 
professors,  pious  priests,  sportsmen,  and  idlers, 
not  to  speak  of  Hindus  and  Mohammedans, 
Japanese  and  Chinese,  and  half  a  dozen  Sioux 
chiefs.  With  these  gentlemen,  a  few  of  many 
with  whom  one  may  have  been  upon  such  pleas- 
ant terms  that  they  have  even  confided  in  him 
and  trusted  him  with  their  secrets,  one  may  have 
passed  many  pleasant  hours.  It  probably  never 
entered  such  a  man's  head  to  wonder  whether 
they  liked  him,  and  he  never  discussed  with  them 
the  question  of  his  liking  for  them.  We  get  on 
by  keeping  our  own  personalities,  prejudices,  and 
creeds  intact.  There  is  no  other  way. 

Other  men  will  give  even  a  more  diverse  list 
of  friends  and  acquaintances,  and  never  for  a 
moment  dream  that  there  is  any  mystery  in  be- 
ing friends  with  all.  Nothing  is  ever  gained  by 
flattery.  To  the  serious  man  flattery  in  the 
form  of  sincere  praise  makes  him  more  respon- 
sible and  only  sadder,  because  he  knows  how 
much  he  falls  below  what  is  expected  of  him,  and 
what  he  expects  of  himself.  Lip-flattery  makes 
a  real  man  feel  as  though  his  sex  had  been  mis- 
taken, he  feels,  as  though  he  had  been  given 


567 

curling-tongs  instead  of  a  razor  for  his  morning 
toilet.  These  pompous  flatteries  that  pass  be- 
tween Germany  and  England  to-day,  make  both 
sides  self-conscious  and  a  little  ashamed  to  write 
and  to  speak  them,  and  to  hear  and  applaud 
them. 

America  and  England  are  shortly  to  celebrate 
the  signing  of  the  treaty  of  Ghent,  which  marks  a 
hundred  years  of  peace  between  the  two  nations. 
We  have  not  been  without  opportunities  to  quar- 
rel. We  have  whole  classes  of  people  in  America 
who  detest  England,  and  in  England  there  are 
not  a  few  who  do  not  conceal  successfully  their 
contempt  for  America,  but  we  have  had  peace, 
and  since  England,  at  the  time  of  our  war  with 
Spain,  said  "Hands  off!"  to  the  powers  that 
wished  to  interfere,  there  has  been  a  great  in- 
crease of  friendly  feeling.  But  there  has  been 
little  or  no  flattery  passing  back  and  forth.  We 
have  sent  ambassador  after  ambassador  to  Eng- 
land who  were  almost  more  American  than  the 
Americans.  Phelps  and  Lowell  and  Hay  and 
Choate  and  Reid  were  all  American  in  name,  in 
tradition,  in  their  successes,  and  in  their  way  of 
looking  at  life.  By  their  learning,  their  wit,  and 
their  criticisms,  by  their  writing  and  speaking, 
by  their  presentation  of  the  claims  to  greatness 
of  our  great  men,  by  their  unhesitating  avowal 


568     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

in  public  and  in  private  of  their  allegiance  to  the 
ideals  of  the  republic  they  served,  they  have 
made  clear  the  American  point  of  view.  Above 
all,  they  have  shown  their  pride  in  their  own 
country  by  acknowledging  and  praising  the  great 
qualities  of  England  and  the  English.  There  has 
been  no  fulsome  flattery,  no  bowing  the  knee  to 
foreign  idols,  and  what  has  been  the  result? 
The  American  ambassador  for  years  has  been 
the  most  popular  diplomatic  figure  in  Great 
Britain.  An  increasing  number  of  Englishmen 
even,  nowadays,  know  who  Washington  and 
Jefferson  and  Lincoln  were,  and  our  understand- 
ing of  one  another  has  grown  rapidly  out  of  this 
frank  and  manly  attitude.  We  were  jealous  and 
suspicious  a  hundred  years  ago,  as  are  England 
and  Germany  to-day,  but  we  have  changed  all 
that  by  our  attitude  of  good-humored  indepen- 
dence, and  by  eliminating  altogether  from  our 
intercourse  the  tainted  delicacy  of  compliment, 
and  the  canting  endearments  of  the  diplomatic 
cocotte.  We  have  emphasized  our  differences  to 
the  great  benefit  of  the  fine  qualities  that  we 
have  and  cherish  in  common. 

The  individual  Protestant  does  not  dislike  the 
individual  Papist,  half  so  much  as  he  dislikes  his 
neighbor  in  the  next  pew,  who  refuses  Sunday 
after  Sunday  to  repeat  the  service  and  the  creed 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    569 

at  the  same  pace  as  the  others,  and  hence  to 
"descend  into  Hell"  with  the  rest  of  the  congre- 
gation. The  Sioux  chief  was  far  more  annoyed 
by  his  neighbor  of  the  same  tribe  in  the  next- 
door  reservation  than  he  was  by  me.  The 
pugilist  scorned  "Tug"  Wilson,  a  brother  fisti- 
cuffs sovereign,  but  had  no  feeling  against  his 
parish  priest.  Theological  protagonists  are 
notoriously  bitter  against  one  another,  but  we 
have  all  found  many  of  them  amiable  compan- 
ions ourselves.  It  is  the  fellow  next  door,  who 
wears  purple  socks,  or  who  parts  his  hair  in  the 
middle,  or  who  wears  his  coat-sleeves  longer  than 
our  tailor  cuts  ours,  or  who  eats  his  soup  with  a 
noise,  or  who  has  damp  hands,  or  talks  through 
his  nose,  who  irritates  us  and  makes  us  wish 
occasionally  for  the  unlimited  club-using  free- 
dom of  the  stone  age.  It  is  your  first  cousin  with 
incurable  catarrh,  and  a  slender  income  who  is 
too  much  with  you,  and  who  spoils  your  temper, 
not  the  anarchist  orator  who  threatens  your 
property  and  almost  your  life. 

"What  do  these  Germans  want?"  asked  a 
distinguished  cabinet  minister  of  me.  'They 
want  consideration,"  I  replied,  "which  is  the 
most  difficult  thing  in  the  world  for  the  English- 
man to  offer  anybody."  "But,  you  don't  mean 
to  say,"  he  continued,  "that  they  really  want  to 


570     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

cut  our  throats  on  account  of  our  bad  manners?  " 
I  cannot  phrase  it  better,  nor  can  I  give  a  more 
illuminating  illustration  of  the  misunderstand- 
ing. That  is  exactly  the  reason,  and  the  para- 
mount reason,  why  nations  and  why  individuals 
attempt  to  cut  one  another's  throats.  Whatever 
the  fundamental  differences  may  have  been  that 
have  led  to  war  between  nations,  the  tiny  spark 
that  started  the  explosion  has  always  been  some 
phase  of  rudeness  or  bad  manners. 

Counting  my  school-days,  I  can  remember 
about  a  dozen  personal  conflicts  in  which  I  have 
engaged,  with  pardonable  pleasure.  Not  one  of 
them  was  a  question  of  territory,  or  religious 
difference,  or  of  racial  hatred;  indeed,  the  last 
one  was  due  to  being  shouldered  in  the  street 
when  my  equanimity  was  already  disturbed  by 
a  lingering  recovery  from  a  feverish  cold. 

It  is,  after  all,  the  little  differences  that  count. 
If  politically  and  socially  Germany  were  a  little 
more  sure  of  herself,  if  she  were  not  ever  omnia 
tuta  timens  Dido;  and  if  England  were  not  as 
ever  quite  so  sure  of  herself,  I  believe  inter- 
course between  them  would  be  less  strained. 


'The  little  gnat-like  buzzings  shrill, 
The  hurdy-gurdies  of  the  street, 

The  common  curses  of  the  will — 

These  wrap  the  cerements  round  our  feet." 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     571 

The  smothered  voice,  the  tepid  manner,  the 
affected  and  hesitating  under-statement,  of  a 
certain  middlish  class  of  English  men  and  women, 
and,  alas,  their  American  imitators,  who  are 
striving  toward  their  comical  interpretation  of 
the  Vere  de  Vere  manner,  are  the  promoters  of 
guffaws  in  private,  and  uneasiness  in  public,  be- 
tween nations,  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  the 
bold  individualist,  whose  voice  and  manners, 
good  or  bad,  are  all  his  own.  It  is  these  small 
attritions  that  wear  us  down,  and  produce  a  sub- 
acid  dislike  between  nations  as  between  indi- 
viduals. It  is  these  that  prepare  the  ground  for 
a  fine  crop  of  misunderstandings. 

But  are  we  not  to  know  our  neighbors  the 
English,  the  Germans,  the  French?  I  for  one 
consider  that  not  to  know  German  and  Germany, 
for  example,  is  nowadays  not  to  be  fully  educated. 
Most  of  us,  however,  have  had  our  nerves  un- 
strung by  the  speeding-up  process  that  has 
gone  on  all  over  the  world  of  late.  We  have  lost 
somewhat  the  power  to  know  people  and  to  let 
them  alone  at  the  same  time.  Goethe,  one  of 
the  coolest  and  wisest  of  men,  maintains:  "Cer- 
tain defects  are  necessary  for  the  existence  of 
individuality.  One  would  not  be  pleased  if  old 
friends  were  to  lay  aside  certain  peculiarities." 

We  should  at  least  give  every  man  as  fair  a 


chance  to  receive  our  good  opinion  as  we  give  a 
picture.  We  should  put  him  in  a  good  light 
before  we  criticise  him.  We  should  take  time 
enough  to  do  that  to  other  nations,  as  well  as  to 
individuals.  I  have  always  had  much  sympathy 
for  a  certain  Roman  general.  He  was  blind, 
and  a  painter  who  painted  him  with  two  large 
eyes,  he  rebuked;  another  painter,  who  painted 
him  in  profile,  he  rewarded. 

It  is,  after  all,  something  of  an  art  to  know 
people,  so  that  the  knowledge  is  serviceable,  so 
that  you  can  depict  them  to  yourself  and  to 
others,  not  as  they  are  as  opposed  to  you,  but 
as  they  are  as  a  complement  and  help  to  you. 

"No  human  quality  is  so  well  wove 
In  warp  and  woof,  but  there's  some  flaw  in  it; 
I've  known  a  brave  man  fly  a  shepherd's  cur, 
A  wise  man  so  demean  himself,  drivelling  idiocy 
Had  wellnigh  been  ashamed  on't.     For  your 

crafty, 

Your  worldly-wise  man,  he,  above  the  rest, 
Weaves  his  own  snares  so  fine,  he's  often 
caught  in  them." 

He  who  does  not  make  allowances  for  weaknesses 
and  differences  in  his  study  of  human  affairs  is 
still  in  the  infant  class.  It  is  a  grave  danger  to 
every  state  that  critics,  smart  or  shallow,  with 
their  tu  quoque  weapons,  their  silly  ridicule, 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    573 

their  emphasis  upon  differences  as  though  they 
were  disasters,  their  constant  failure  to  recognize 
the  value  of  certain  weaknesses,  their  stupidity 
in  not  painting  great  men  who  happen  to  be 
blind,  in  profile,  and  their  harping  upon  the 
flaws,  and  their  neglect  of  the  fine  texture  of 
human  qualities  that  are  strange  to  them,  that 
these  critics  are  not  muzzled,  or,  if  that  is  im- 
possible, disregarded. 

They  make  it  appear  that  amicable  relations 
between  nations  are  next  to  impossible.  If  you 
escape  one  danger  of  offending,  you  are  sure  to 
give  offence  in  some  other  way,  they  seem  to  say. 
They  are  hysterical  in  their  self-consciousness, 
"as  if  a  man  did  flee  from  a  lion  and  a  bear  met 
him,  or  went  in  the  house  and  leaned  his  hand 
on  the  wall  and  a  serpent  bit  him."  Sir  Edward 
Grey  writes  on  this  subject:  "I  sometimes  think 
that  half  the  difficulties  of  foreign  policy  arise 
from  the  exceeding  ingenuity  of  different  coun- 
tries in  attributing  motives  and  intentions  to 
the  governments  of  each  other.  As  far  as  I  can 
observe,  the  press  of  various  countries  is  much 
more  fertile  in  inventing  motives  and  intentions 
for  the  governments  of  the  different  countries 
than  the  foreign  ministers  of  these  countries 
are  themselves.  Foreign  governments  and  our 
c\vn  government  live  from  hand  to  mouth  and 


have  fewer  deep  plans  than  people  might  sup- 
pose. There  is  an  old  warning  that  you  should 
not  spend  too  much  time  in  looking  at  the  dark 
cupboard  for  the  black  cat  that  is  not  there,  and 
I  think  if  sometimes  we  were  a  little  less  suspi- 
cious of  deep  design  or  motive  that  the  affairs 
of  the  world  would  progress  more  smoothly." 

The  trouble  lies  in  our  undertaking  the  im- 
possible, to  the  neglect  of  the  obvious  and  the 
possible.  The  basic  fact  of  nationality  is  a  pref- 
erence for  our  own  ways,  customs,  and  habits 
over  those  of  other  people.  If  the  Chinese  and 
Japanese,  the  Servians  and  Albanians,  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  Germans  liked  one  another  as  well 
as  they  like  their  own,  there  would  be  no  nation- 
alism to  protect  or  to  preserve.  Such  racial  and 
traditional  liking  of  nation  for  nation  is  impos- 
sible of  achievement.  No  journeyings,  speechi- 
fyings,  banquets,  or  compliments  will  bring  it 
about.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  not  sure  that  it 
is  not  these  very  differences  which  cheer  us  and 
give  us  a  new  flavor  in  our  pleasure  in  living, 
when  we  cross  the  Atlantic,  the  Channel,  or  the 
Rhine.  '  What  we  should  strive  for  is  not  social 
and  racial  absorption,  but  social  and  racial  dif- 
ference and  distinction,  with  that  pride  in  our 
own  which  makes  for  patience  in  the  under- 
standing of  others. 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    575 

It  is  the  petty,  self-conscious  American  who 
hates  the  English,  the  provincial  Englishman 
who  hates  the  German,  the  socially  insecure 
German  who  hates  the  Frenchman,  the  English- 
man, and  the  American.  Those  of  us  who  are 
poised,  secure,  satisfied,  and  at  bottom  proud  of 
our  race,  our  breeding,  and  our  country,  are 
neither  irritable  nor  irritating  in  the  matter  of 
international  relations.  We  have  enough  to  do, 
and  let  others  alone.  Let  us  dine  one  another, 
criticise  one  another  in  the  effort  to  improve 
ourselves,  praise  one  another  where  the  praise 
serves  to  establish  our  own  ideals ;  but  let  us  give 
up  this  forced  and  awkward  courting  by  banquets, 
deputations,  and  conferences.  Let  us  study  the 
great  art  of  leaving  one  another  alone.  This  is 
a  time-hallowed  doctrine.  The  greatest  of  all 
satirists  and  critics  of  manners  knew  this  secret  of 
successful  intercourse  with  one  another.  One  of 
the  characters  in  the  "Frogs"  of  Aristophanes  is 
made  to  say:  "Don't  come  trespassing  upon  my 
mind;  you  have  a  house  of  your  own."  Pro- 
pinquity does  not  necessarily  entail  intimacy; 
as  the  world  grows  smaller,  more  and  more 
people  think  so,  perhaps  often  enough  only  to 
escape  from  themselves,  a  favorite  form  of  elope- 
ment these  days.  Some  men  are  fed  by  solitude 
and  starved  by  too  much  companionship,  and 


576     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  same  is  true  of  nations.  You  cannot  control 
others  till  you  have  learned  to  control  yourself, 
or  save  another  till  you  yourself  are  saved,  and 
most  of  us  had  better  be  about  that  business. 

It  is  England's  business  to  know  just  now,  and 
to  some  extent  ours,  how  many  ships  Germany 
is  building  and  how  many  men  she  has  in  train- 
ing to  man  them;  but  it  is  not  in  the  least  any- 
body's business  to  question  her  motives  or  to 
attempt  to  dictate  her  policy.  It  is  our  business 
to  shut  up,  and  to  build  ships  and  to  train  men 
according  to  our  notions  of  what  is  necessary 
for  safety  in  case  of  an  explosion.  We  should 
be  about  our  father's  business,  not  about  our 
brother's  business. 

It  is  shallow  thinking  and  lack  of  knowledge 
of  the  men  and  women  of  stranger  countries,  and 
above  all  that  terrible  itching  to  be  doing  some- 
thing, which  lead  to  these  futile  excursions  and 
this  silly  talk. 

Can  anything  be  more  maudlin  than  to  sup- 
pose that  international  sensitiveness,  that  com- 
mercial rivalries,  that  tariff  discriminations,  that 
territorial  misunderstandings,  are  to  be  soothed 
and  smoothed  away,  by  dissertations  upon  how 
much  we  owe  to  one  another  in  matters  of  cult- 
ure? Think  what  we  owe  to  Goethe  and  Les- 
sing,  to  Spinoza  and  Kant,  to  Heine  and  Mozart 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"    577 

and  Wagner  and  Beethoven,  reiterates  the  Eng- 
lishman; think  what  we  owe  to  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  to  Byron  and  Shelley  and  Scott,  to  Lister 
and  Newton,  answers  the  German!  Who  can 
go  to  war  with  the  countrymen  of  Racine  and 
Moliere  and  Pascal  and  Montesquieu  and  Des- 
cartes? repeats  the  friend  of  France;  and  by 
others  are  trumpeted  the  fraternal  relations  that 
we  ought  to  cultivate  with  the  countrymen  of 
Dante,  or  of  Euripides,  ^Eschylus,  and  Sophocles. 
This  is  phantom  friendship,  and  we  all  know  in 
our  heart  of  hearts,  that  we  would  fight  any  or 
all  of  them  at  the  drop  of  a  handkerchief,  if  they 
hurt  our  feelings,  ruffled  our  national  pride,  or 
maltreated  in  a  foreign  land  the  meanest  of  our 
racial  brothers.  Straining  after  such  artificial 
bonds  of  union  is  as  irritating  as  it  is  unreal. 

Germany  has  few  heartier  admirers  of  Bis- 
marck than  am  I;  England  has  few  franker 
friends  of  her  great  gentlemen  in  peace  and  war 
than  am  I;  I  have  read  and  profited  by  French 
literature  far  more  than  from  anything  America 
has  produced;  if  I  can  write  so  that  here  and 
there  a  brother  has  profited  therefrom,  I  owe 
it  to  the  Frenchmen  I  have  studied;  but  these 
are  all  nothing  as  compared  with  my  heart's  real 
allegiances.  There  is  a  gulp  in  my  throat  when 
I  dream  of  that  weary,  misunderstood,  but  pa- 


578    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

tient  and  humble  peace-maker,  who  held  the 
scales  between  the  millions  of  my  own  country- 
men, shooting  and  stabbing  one  another  to  death 
fifty  years  ago.  No  other  man  can  be  quite  like 
him  to  me;  he  remains  my  master  of  men,  as  is 
Lee  my  ideal  of  the  Happy  Warrior.  I  under- 
stand the  grim  humor  in  his  sad  eyes,  I  love  that 
lined  face,  cut  from  the  granite  of  self-control, 
that  tamed  volcano  face,  seamed  and  scarred  by 
the  lava  of  his  trials  and  his  tears;  I  can  see  how 
the  illuminating  and  conciliatory  anecdotes  were 
his  relief  from  the  pain  of  an  aching  heart;  my 
muscles  harden  and  my  nerves  tingle  as  I  recall 
the  puppet  politicians  and  fancy  self -advertising 
warriors  who  crucified  him  slowly.  The  coun- 
try and  the  people  that  Lincoln  believed  in,  I 
must  believe  in  and  fight  for  too.  Washington 
was  an  Englishman  and  baptized  us,  but  Lin- 
coln was  an  American  who  officiated  at  our  first 
communion  as  a  united  people. 

I  ask  no  Englishman,  no  German,  no  French- 
man to  agree  with  me,  but  I  ask  them  to  leave 
me  alone  with  my  dead,  to  leave  me  in  peace 
with  my  living  problems,  to  force  no  artificial 
friendships  upon  me,  and  thus  to  let  our  respect 
for  one  another  increase  naturally. 

Has  the  Englishman,  has  the  German,  no 
sanctuaries  to  be  left  undisturbed;  no  heart- 


"FROM  ENVY,  HATRED,  MALICE"     579 

strings  that  are  not  to  be  fumbled  at  by  busy 
fingers;  no  personal  dignities  to  be  shrouded  from 
investigations;  no  sweet  silences  of  sorrow  that 
are  barred  to  foreign  mourners?  If  he  have  not, 
then  all  this  clamor  at  the  doors  of  national 
privacy  is  well  enough;  but  let  them  remember 
that  when  nations  lose  their  dignity  and  their  ra- 
cial pride,  there  is  sure  to  follow  the  squabbling 
and  the  jealousy,  the  rough  speech  and  vulgar 
manners,  of  the  domestic  circle,  in  the  same 
plight  of  spiritual  shamelessness.  The  best  that 
any  of  us  learn  is  to  be  a  little  more  patient,  a 
little  more  charitable,  a  little  more  careful  of  the 
dignity  of  others  in  our  own  homes,  or  abroad, 
and  then  the  light  goes  out! 


XI 

CONCLUSION 

CRITICISM  is   temptingly  easy  when  it 
consists,  as  it  so  often  does,  in  merely 
noting  what  is  different,  or  what  is  not 
there.     Helpful  criticism  I  take  to  be  the  dis- 
covery of  what  is  there,  and  its  revelation,  with 
an  examination  of  its  history,  its  truth,  and  its 
value.    That  kind  of  criticism  is  close  to  creation 
itself,  and  few  there  are  sufficiently  self-sacrific- 
ing to  endow  and  to  train  themselves  to  under- 
take it. 

It  makes  life  very  complicated  to  think  too 
much  about  it,  but  to  take  a  step  further,  and  to 
attempt  to  apply  logic  to  life,  that  way  madness 
lies.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  life  that  things 
are  never  as  they  ought  to  be,  but  only  as  they 
can  be  for  the  time  being.  We  may  be  opti- 
mistic enough  to  believe  that  this  is  a  good  world, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  unbending  virtue 
seldom  receives  the  temporal  rewards  for  which 
most  of  us  are  striving,  and  with  which  alone 

most  of  us  are  content.    We  are  forced  to  doubt, 

580 


CONCLUSION  581 

therefore,  the  goodness  which  finds  life  easy  and 
comfortable,  and  since  we  must  still  at  all  haz- 
ards be  charitable  in  our  judgments  of  one  an- 
other, we  become,  most  of  us,  opportunists  in 
morals. 

In  dealing  with  the  men,  manners,  affairs,  and 
the  soul  of  a  stranger  people,  therefore,  one  must 
use  what  experience,  knowledge,  good-humor, 
and  impartiality  one  has,  without  assumption  of 
superiority,  without  making  high  demands,  and 
without  ceasing  to  be  at  least  as  opportunist  as 
we  are  at  home.  Because  things  are  different, 
they  are  not  necessarily  better  or  worse,  and  if 
certain  things  are  not  there,  it  is  perhaps  be- 
cause they  do  not  belong  there.  Above  all,  we 
should  refrain  from  applying  a  stern  logic  to  the 
life  of  another  country  which  we  never  use  in 
measuring  our  own. 

The  whole  north  of  Germany  is  a  flat,  barren 
plain,  with  the  Elbe,  the  Oder,  the  Weser  flowing 
west  and  north.  The  north  of  Germany  on  a 
raised  map  looks  like  a  vast  sea-shore,  and  so  it 
is.  To  the  south  a  great  river,  the  Rhine, 
pierces  its  way  from  Frankfort  through  a  beau- 
tiful gorge  in  the  mountains,  and  has  its  source 
near  that  of  the  Danube.  Barbarossa  called  this 
river,  "that  royal  street."  This  sea-shore  is  cul- 
tivated and  populous ;  this  river  has  been  made  a 


582    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

great  commercial  highway.  Cologne,  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  from  the  sea,  is  now  a  sea- 
port; Strasburg,  three  hundred  miles  inland,  can 
receive  boats  of  six  hundred  tons ;  and  the  tribu- 
tary river,  the  Main,  has  been  deepened  so  that 
now  Frankfort  receives  steamers  from  the  Rhine. 
Three  quarters  of  the  through  trade  of  Holland 
is  German  water-borne  trade.  Now  the  Dort- 
mund-Ems canal,  which  is  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  miles  long,  and  can  be  used  by  ships  of  a 
thousand  tons,  gives  an  outlet,  via  the  Rhine,  at 
Emden.  All  this  is  the  work  of  a  patient,  per- 
sistent, and  economical  people  working  under 
great  natural  disadvantages. 

As  compared  with  America  this  is  an  unfruit- 
ful land,  and,  as  I  have  noted,  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  powerful  enemies.  In  1902  Traugott 
Miiller  estimated  the  value  of  Germany's  pro- 
duction of  wheat,  potatoes,  vegetables — the  prod- 
ucts of  the  gardens  and  the  fields,  in  short — at 
$605,000,000;  the  production  of  beef,  mutton, 
pork  at  $669,500,000;  of  the  dairies  at  $406,- 
000,000;  of  cotton,  sugar,  alcohol,  wine,  and 
wood  at  $322,000,000;  or  a  total  of  $2,002,000,- 
000.  The  United  States  is  seventeen  times  as 
large,  but  by  no  means  seventeen  times  as  pro- 
ductive. 

Germany,  again,  is  divided  into  a  number  of 


CONCLUSION  583 

states,  all,  with  the  exception  of  Prussia,  with  its 
population  of  40,000,000  out  of  the  total  of  65,- 
000,000,  comparatively  small.  These  states  are 
not  merely  divided  by  legal  and  geographical 
lines,  but  by  traditions,  different  ruling  families, 
religion,  tastes,  habits,  and  manners,  and  even 
geologically.  Bernhard  Cotta,  writing  of  Ger- 
many, says:  "Geologically  there  is  a  Spain,  an 
England,  a  Sweden,  a  Russia,  a  France,  but  no 
Germany."  They  are  different  individuals,  not 
different  members  of  the  same  family.  They 
have  been  cemented  together  by  coercion. 

Over  this  whole  country  for  three  hundred 
years  have  swept  all  the  fighting  men  of  Europe. 
Until  1870  it  was  a  tournament  ground  for  the 
Swedes,  Russians,  French,  Dutch,  Belgians, 
Italians,  Hungarians,  English,  and  the  various 
German  states.  It  was  shot  over,  till  it  is  a 
wonder  that  there  are  any  young  birds,  not  to 
speak  of  old  cocks  and  hens  left,  to  begin  with 
over  again. 

A  feature  of  the  political  situation,  which 
scarcely  enters  into  political  calculations  in  Amer- 
ica, is  the  sharp  division  between  Protestants 
and  Catholics,  with  a  political  party  of  Cath- 
olics numbering  one  fourth  of  the  total  members, 
in  the  Reichstag.  In  1905  there  were  37,646,852 
Protestants  and  22,109,644  Catholics  in  Ger- 


584     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

many,  the  Roman  Catholics  being  in  a  majority 
in  Baden,  Bavaria,  and  Alsace-Lorraine.  In  the 
past  these  religious  differences  have  entailed  all 
the  most  repulsive  features  of  war,  waged  to  the 
point  of  extermination.  "Lieber  Rom  als  Lib- 
eral," is  still  a  punning  war-cry  marking  the  dis- 
like of  Rome  and  the  fear  of  Socialism. 

With  us  religion  has  become  largely  an  organ- 
ized attempt,  using  charity  as  patronage,  to  rec- 
oncile piety  and  plenty,  with  the  result  that 
with  the  exception  of  the  Catholic  Church  deal- 
ing with  the  lately  arrived  immigrants,  and  the 
Methodists  and  Baptists  dealing  with  the  ig- 
norant masses,  black  and  white,  in  the  South, 
religion  in  the  sense  of  an  organized  church  has 
little  hold  upon  the  people,  especially  in  the 
large  cities. 

In  America  the  indifference  to  religion  is  the 
result  of  suspicion.  The  congregations  are  too 
largely  black-coated  and  white-collared,  and  the 
lay  officers  of  the  churches  much  too  solemnly 
sleek  and  serenely  solvent  to  attract  the  weak, 
the  unfortunate,  the  sorrowing,  and  the  sinner. 
The  mere  appearance  of  the  congregation  in  a 
prosperous  Protestant  church  in  an  American 
city  is  a  mockery  of  Christianity.  Any  man 
who  preaches  to  men  who  can  own  a  seat  in 
God's  house  is  a  craven  opportunist.  Until 


CONCLUSION  585 

the  doors  of  the  churches  are  open  all  the 
week,  and  the  seats  in  the  churches  free,  to 
claim  that  the  Christ  is  there  is  little  short  of 
blasphemy.  It  is  no  wonder  that  those  who 
need  Him  most,  never  dream  of  seeking  for  Him 
in  these  ecclesiastical  clubs. 

In  Germany  half-baked  thinking,  following 
upon,  and  as  the  result  of,  the  barracks  and  cor- 
poral methods  of  education,  have  turned  the 
Protestant  population  from  the  churches.  The 
slovenly  and  patchy  omniscience  of  the  partly 
educated,  leads  them  to  believe  that  they  know 
enough  not  to  believe.  Renan,  though  a  doubter 
himself,  saw  the  weakness  of  this  form  of  dis- 
belief when  he  wrote:  "There  are  in  reality  but 
few  people  who  have  a  right  not  to  believe  in 
Christianity." 

The  people  living  upon  this  ethnographical 
chess-board  have  been  for  centuries  rather  tribal 
than  national,  and  are  still  rather  philosophical 
than  political,  rather  idealistic  than  practical, 
rather  dreamy  than  adventurous.  To  organ- 
ize this  population  for  self-support  and  self-de- 
fence, to  ignore  differences,  racial  and  religious, 
to  stamp  out  the  jealousies  of  small  rulers,  re- 
quired severe  measures,  and  we  are  all  learning 
to-day  that  democracies  are  seldom  severe  with 
themselves.  A  tyrannical  autocracy,  led  by 


586     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

the  Great  Elector,  Frederick  the  Great,  and  Bis- 
marck, produced  from  this  welter  of  discord  the 
astonishing  results  of  to-day. 

We  have  to-day,  in  an  area  of  208,780  square 
miles,  5,604  square  miles  representing  the  lately 
conquered  territory  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  a  popu- 
lation of  64,903,423,  of  whom  1,028,560  are  sub- 
jects of  foreign  powers.  To  defend  this  area 
there  are  to  be,  according  to  figures  estimated 
even  as  this  volume  goes  to  press,  a  million  men 
under  arms  in  the  army  and  navy.  Their  enor- 
mous progress  in  trade,  in  industry,  in  ship- 
building, is  set  out  in  full  in  every  year-book, 
for  the  curious  to  ponder.  In  so  short  a  time, 
on  so  poor  a  soil,  in  such  a  restricted  space,  with 
such  a  past  of  distress  and  disaster,  and  dealing 
with  such  conflicting  interests,  a  like  success  in 
nation-building  is  unparalleled. 

Industrial  and  martial  beehive  though  it 
would  seem  to  be,  there  are  provided  for  the 
native  and  the  foreigner  feasts  of  music,  of  art, 
and  of  study  that  cost  little.  There  are  quiet 
streams,  lovely,  lonely  walks,  and  quaint  towns 
that  are  nests  of  archaeological  interest.  In 
Weimar,  in  Stuttgart,  in  Schwerin,  in  Diissel- 
dorf,  in  Karlsruhe,  not  to  mention  Munich,  Leip- 
sic,  Dresden,  Berlin,  Frankfort,  Hamburg,  there 
are  centres  of  culture.  The  best  that  the  mind 


CONCLUSION  587 

of  man  creates  is  still  spread  out  there  as  of 
yore  for  whomsoever  will  to  partake,  but  ever  in 
less  abundance  and  with  less  enthusiasm.  And 
these  names  are  a  mere  fraction  of  the  number  of 
such  places. 

The  rivalries  between  the  states  is  now  to  a 
large  extent  an  elevating  rivalry  of  culture, 
dotting  the  map  of  Germany  with  resting-places 
for  the  curious,  the  scholarly,  or  the  sentimental 
traveller.  You  may  have  plain  living  and  high 
thinking  in  scores  of  the  cities  and  towns  of  Ger- 
many, and  you  will  be  considered  neither  an 
outcast  nor  an  eccentric;  indeed,  you  will  find  no 
small  part  of  the  population  your  companions. 

You  may  stroll  for  miles  on  the  banks  of  that 
tiny  stream  the  Zschopau,  and  expect  to  see 
sprites  and  nymphs,  so  hidden  are  its  windings; 
and  where  in  all  the  world  will  a  handkerchief 
cover  an  Ulm,  an  Augsburg,  a  Rothenburg, 
Ansbach,  Nuremberg,  Wiirzburg,  with  their 
wealth  of  associations? 

The  Fugger  family,  of  Augsburg,  tell  us  again 
that  there  is  nothing  new  in  the  world.  Five 
hundred  years  ago  they  were  millionaires.  One 
of  these  Fuggers  had  a  voice  even  in  the  election 
of  Charles  V,  and  we  are  still  hard  at  it  trying 
to  keep  our  Fuggers  from  meddling  in  politics. 
Another  Fugger,  Marcus  by  name,  wrote  a  cap- 


588     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

ital  book  on  the  horse  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  at  the  last  horse-show  at  Olympia,  in  1912,  a 
Fugger  came  over  from  Germany  and  took  away 
the  first  prize  for  officers'  chargers.  So  far  flung 
was  their  fame  as  money-lenders  that  usury  was 
called  "Fuggerei"! 

Heirs  of  great  houses  got  out  of  hand  then  as 
now,  and  Duke  Albert  III  of  Bavaria  married 
Agnes  Bernauer,  the  barber's  daughter,  and  even 
the  Archduke  Ferdinand  of  Austria  ran  off  with 
Fraulein  Welser.  One  citizen  of  Augsburg 
fitted  out  a  squadron  to  take  possession  of  Vene- 
zuela, which  had  been  given  him  by  the  Emperor 
Charles  V.  For  some  reason  the  squadron  did 
not  sail;  Lord  Salisbury  and  President  Cleve- 
land could  have  told  this  adventurous  Augs- 
burger  that  he  was  better  off  at  home! 

Bishop  Boniface,  of  Wurzburg,  was  an  Eng- 
lishman, and  his  father  was  a  wheelwright.  He 
put  cart-wheels  in  his  coat-of-arms,  and  they 
have  remained  to  this  day  in  the  arms  of  the 
town,  a  fine  reminder  to  snobbery  that  ancestry 
only  explains,  it  cannot  exalt. 

"Pigmies  are  pigmies  still,  though  perch'd  on  Alps, 
And  pyramids  are  pyramids  in  vales." 

The  atmosphere  in  these  towns  is  one  of  re- 
pose. They  are  still  wise  enough  to  know  that 


CONCLUSION  589 

the  miraculous  improvements  in  speed  brought 
about  by  steam  and  electricity  have  not  short- 
ened the  journey  of  the  soul  to  heaven  by  one 
second.  They  know  that  Socrates  on  a  donkey 
really  goes  faster  than  Solly  Goldberg  in  his 
sixty-horse-power  motor-car.  They  are  suspi- 
cious of  the  new  cosmopolitan  creed,  that  suc- 
cessful advertising  endows  a  man  with  eternal 
life.  Countless  political  quacks  have  been  cari- 
catured, advertised,  and  cinematographed  into 
familiarity,  but  wise  men  still  read  Plato  and 
Aristotle.  The  penny  press  has  not  convinced 
them  that  popularity  is  immortality;  they  rec- 
ognize popularity  as  merely  glory  paid  in  pennies. 
They  partake  to  some  extent  of  the  patience  of 
the  Oriental.  They  suspect,  as  most  men  of 
wide  intellectual  experience  do,  that  the  man 
who  cannot  wait  must  be  a  coward  at  bot- 
tom, afraid  of  himself,  or  of  the  world,  or  of 
God. 

This  is  wholly  true  of  many  Germans,  de- 
spite the  clang  of  arms,  the  noise  of  steam-ham- 
mers, the  shrieking  locomotives,  the  puffing 
steamers,  the  clinking  of  their  gold,  and  the 
shouting  of  their  pedlers,  now  scattered  all  over 
the  world.  It  is  this  combination,  in  the  same 
small  area,  of  noise  and  repose;  of  political 
subserviency  at  home  and  sabre-rattling  abroad; 


590    GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

of  close  organization  at  home  and  colonizing 
inefficiency  abroad;  of  moral  and  intellectual 
freedom,  one  might  almost  call  it  moral  and 
intellectual  anarchy  these  days,  and  at  the 
same  time  submission  to  a  domestic  and  social 
tyranny  unknown  to  us,  that  makes  even  a 
timid  author  feel  that  he  is  discovering  the 
Germans  to  his  countrymen,  so  little  do  they 
know  of  this  side  of  German  life. 

They  are  not  at  all  what  the  Americans  and 
the  English  think  they  are.  They  want  peace, 
and  we  think  they  want  war.  The  huge  arma- 
ments are  intended  to  frighten  us,  just  as  were 
the  grotesquely  ugly  masks  of  the  Chinese  war- 
riors. They  intend  to  frighten  us  all  with  their 
850,000  soldiers,  their  great  fleet,  their  air-ships 
and  aeroplanes,  and  when  they  go  to  Agadir 
again  they  hope  to  be  able  to  stay  there  till 
their  demands  are  granted.  They  are  the  last 
comers  into  the  society  of  nations  and  they 
mean  to  insist  upon  recognition.  But  this  de- 
mand is  an  artificial  one  so  far  as  the  great  mass 
of  Germans  is  concerned.  It  is  the  Prussian 
conqueror,  and  the  small  class,  officer,  official 
and  royal,  representing  that  conqueror,  who  are 
determined  upon  this  course.  They  have  uni- 
fied Germany,  they  have  made  the  laws  and 
forced  obedience  to  them;  and  the  heavily 


CONCLUSION  591 

taxed,  hard-driven,  politically  powerless  people 
are  helpless. 

Nowhere  has  socialistic  legislation  been  so 
cunningly  and  skilfully  used  for  the  enslave- 
ment of  the  people.  No  small  part  of  every 
man's  wages  .is  paid  to  him  in  insurance;  in- 
surance for  unemployment,  for  accident,  sick- 
ness, and  old  age.  There  is  but  faint  hope  of 
saving  enough  to  buy  one's  freedom,  and  if  the 
slave  runs  away  he  leaves,  of  course,  all  the 
premiums  he  has  paid  in  the  hands  of  his  master. 
A  general  uprising  is  guarded  against  by  a  re- 
doubtable force  of  officials,  officers,  and  soldiers, 
whose  very  existence  depends  upon  their  de- 
fence of  and  upholding  of  the  state  under  its 
present  laws  and  rulers. 

Our  grandfathers  and  fathers,  some  of  them, 
talked  and  read  of  Saint-Simon,  of  Fourier,  Rob- 
ert Owen,  Maurice  Kingsley,  and  the  Brook 
Farm  experiment,  and  believed,  no  doubt,  that 
the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century  would  have 
extracted  at  least  some  balm  from  these  theories 
for  the  healing  of  our  social  woes.  They  would 
rub  their  eyes  in  amazement  were  they  to  awake 
in  1912  to  find  more  armed  men,  more  ships  of 
war,  more  fighting,  more  strikes  and  trade  dis- 
putes, than  ever  before.  Above  all,  they  would 
be  puzzled  to  find  the  nation  which  is  most  ad- 


592     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

vanced  in  the  application  of  the  theory  of  state 
socialism  with  the  largest  army,  the  heaviest 
taxation,  and  the  second  most  formidable  fleet. 

The  library  in  which,  as  a  small  boy,  I  was 
permitted  to  browse,  where  I  read  those  won- 
derful Black  Forest  Stories  and  my  first  serious 
novel,  On  the  Heights,  contained  a  bust  of  Goethe, 
and  on  the  shelves  were  Fichte,  Freytag,  Spiel- 
hagen,  Strauss,  and  a  miscellaneous  collection 
of  German  authors  grave  and  gay,  or  perhaps 
melancholy  were  a  better  word,  for  even  now  I 
should  find  it  hard  to  point  to  a  German  author 
who  is  distinctively  gay.  No  visitor  to  that 
library,  and  they  numbered  many  distinguished 
visitors,  American  and  foreign,  from  Emerson 
and  Alcott  and  George  Macdonald  to  others 
less  well  known,  dreamed  that  the  serene  mar- 
ble features  of  Goethe  would  be  replaced  by  the 
granite  fissures  of  the  face  of  Bismarck;  and 
that  Auerbach's  Black  Forest  Stories  would  be 
less  known  than  Albert  Ballin's  fleet  of  mercan- 
tile ships.  As  I  dream  myself  back  to  that  big 
chair  wherein  I  could  curl  up  my  whole  person, 
and  still  leave  room  for  at  least  two  fair-sized 
dogs,  I  see  as  in  no  other  way  the  almost  unbe- 
lievable change  that  has  come  over  Germany. 
The  Black  Forest  Stories,  Hammer  and  Anvil, 
The  Lost  Manuscript,  Werther,  Fichte,  Kant, 


CONCLUSION  593 

Hegel,  Schopenhauer,  Strauss,  Heine  were  Ger- 
many then;  Bismarck,  Ballin,  and  Krupp  are 
Germany  now.  Germany  was  Hamlet  then; 
Germany  is  Shylock,  Shylock  armed  to  the 
teeth,  now. 

No  nation  can  change  in  one  generation,  as  has 
Germany,  by  the  natural  development  of  its 
innate  characteristics;  such  a  change  must  be 
forced  and  artificial  to  take  place  in  so  short  a 
time.  This  is  not  only  the  internal  danger  to 
Germany  itself,  but  the  danger  to  all  those 
superficial  observers  who  point  to  Germany  as 
having  solved  certain  social  and  economic 
problems.  She  has  not  solved  them  by  healthy 
growth  into  better  ways;  she  has  suppressed 
them,  strangled  them,  suffocated  them. 

The  heroes  and  heroines  of  my  Black  Forest 
Stories  have  been  rudely  stuffed  into  the  uni- 
forms of  officials,  soldiers,  factory  hands,  and 
Red  Cross  nurses.  The  toy-shops  have  been 
developed,  on  borrowed  capital,  into  ship-build- 
ing yards  and  factories  for  guns  and  ammunition. 
The  dreamer  in  dressing-gown  and  slippers  has 
been  forced  into  the  cap  and  apron  of  the  work- 
man. The  small  sovereigns  have  been  fright- 
ened into  allegiance  to  the  war  lord,  whose 
shadow  falls  upon  every  corner  of  Germany. 

In  this  new  scheme  of  things  it  soon  became 


594     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

evident,  that  the  individual  was  incompetent  to 
take  care  of  himself  along  lines  best  suited  to 
the  plans  of  his  new  conqueror,  therefore  part  of 
his  earnings  were  taken  from  all  alike  to  provide 
against  accident,  sickness,  unemployment,  and 
old  age,  and  thus  bind  him  fast  to  the  chariot  of 
his  warrior  lord.  Germany,  having  given  up  the 
belief  that  the  salvation  of  her  own  soul  was 
of  prime  importance,  became  suspiciously  con- 
cerned about  the  souls  and  bodies  of  the  people. 
We  are  all  to  some  extent  following  her  example. 
The  wise  among  us  are  sad,  the  capitalist  and 
his  ally  the  demagogue  are  seen  everywhere  all 
smiles,  rubbing  their  hands,  for  the  more  people 
are  made  to  believe  that  they  can  be,  and  ought 
to  be,  taken  care  of,  the  more  the  machinery  is 
put  into  their  hands,  the  more  plunder  comes 
their  way,  the  more  indispensable  they  are. 

The  great  majority  of  people  who  write  or 
speak  of  Germany  applaud  this  situation;  let 
me  frankly  say,  what  everybody  will  be  saying 
in  twenty-five  years,  I  deplore  it.  It  is  a  purely 
artificial,  incompetent,  and  dreary  solution. 
Even  Hamlet  were  better  than  Shylock. 

Fortunately  there  is  also  a  large  and  increas- 
ing class  in  Germany  who  distrust  the  situation. 
They  point  to  the  fact  that  technical  education 
is  producing  an  army  of  dingy  artisans,  who  turn 


CONCLUSION  595 

out  the  cheap  and  nasty  by  the  million,  an  edu- 
cation which  chokes  idealism  and  increases  the 
growing  flippancy  in  matters  of  faith  and  morals ; 
they  sneer,  and  well  they  may,  at  the  manu- 
factured art,  the  carpenter's  Gothic  architecture, 
the  sickly  literature,  the  decaying  interest  in 
scholarship;  they  find  fewer  and  fewer  candi- 
dates for  exploration  and  colonization;  they 
rankle  under  the  series  of  diplomatic  ineptitudes 
since  Bismarck;  they  see  France,  Russia,  and 
England  antagonized  and  leagued  against  them, 
and  their  own  allies,  Austria-Hungary  and  Italy, 
in  a  confused  state  of  squabble  with  their  neigh- 
bors; they  are  nervous  and  disquieted  by  the 
financial  and  industrial  conditions;  they  con- 
demn whole-heartedly  the  political  caste  system 
by  which  much  of  the  best  material  in  Germany 
is  barred  from  the  councils  and  the  diplomatic 
and  executive  activities  of  the  nation;  there  are 
not  a  few  who  would  welcome  an  inconclusive 
war  that  would,  they  think,  put  an  end  to  this 
system,  and  make  the  ruler  and  the  officials  re- 
sponsible to  the  people;  they  wish  to  open  the 
doors  of  this  governmental,  legislative,  educa- 
tional, industrial  hot-house,  and  give  the  nation 
a  chance  to  grow  naturally  in  the  open  air. 

The  policy  of  making  other  people  afraid  of 
you  must  have  an  end,  the  policy  of  making 


596     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

others  respect  and  like  you  can  have  no  end. 
There  is  no  question  which  is  the  natural  law 
of  national  development.  Neither  for  the  in- 
dividual nor  for  a  nation  is  it  wholesome  to  in- 
crease antagonisms  and  to  lessen  the  concilia- 
tory points  of  contact  with  the  world. 

Many  of  the  weaknesses,  much  of  the  strength 
of  Germany  are  artificial.  They  have  not 
grown,  they  have  been  forced.  The  very  bar- 
renness of  the  soil,  the  ring  of  enemies,  the  soft 
moral  and  social  texture  of  the  population,  have, 
so  their  little  knot  of  rulers  think,  made  neces- 
sary these  harsh,  artificial  forcing  methods. 

The  outstanding  proof  of  the  artificiality  of 
this  civilization  is  its  powerlessness  to  propa- 
gate. Germans  transplanted  from  their  hot- 
house civilization  to  other  countries  cease  to 
be  Germans;  and  nowhere  in  the  world  outside 
Germany  is  German  civilization  imitated,  liked, 
or  adopted.  The  German  is  nonplussed  to  find 
the  Pole  in  the  East,  the  Frenchman  in  the  West, 
the  Dane  in  the  North,  scoffing  at  his  alte 
Kultur,  as  he  calls  it,  and  he  is  irritated  beyond 
measure  by  the  German  from  America,  who  re- 
turns to  the  Vaterland  to  criticise,  to  sneer,  and 
to  thank  God  that  he  is  an  American,  not  a 
German  citizen.  Germans  become  English  cit- 
izens, no  Englishmen  become  Germans;  mill- 


CONCLUSION  597 

ions  of  Germans  have  become  Americans,  no 
Americans  become  Germans.  No  other  pop- 
ulation would  be  amenable  to  the  Prussian 
methods  that  have  made  Germany,  nor  is  there 
anywhere  in  the  world  a  people  demanding 
Prussian  methods,  while  there  are  millions  under 
the  Prussian  yoke  who  hate  it. 

The  German  rhetoric  to  the  effect  that  Ger- 
many is  to  save  the  world  by  Teutonizing  the 
world,  is  laughable.  Prussia  is  the  ventrilo- 
quist behind  this  half-hearted  boast. 

Werther,  and  Faust,  and  Lohengrin,  are  far 
more  real  than  those  scarecrows  autocracy, 
bureaucracy,  and  militarism,  triplets  of  straw, 
premature  births,  not  destined  to  live,  of  which 
Germany  boasts  to-day  as  the  most  precocious 
children  in  the  world.  They  are  just  that,  pre- 
cocious children,  teaching  the  pallid  religion  of 
dependence  upon  the  state  and  enforcing  the 
anarchical  morality  of  man's  despair  of  him- 
self. Our  descendants  will  have  Werther  and 
Faust  and  Lohengrin,  as  the  companions  of  their 
dreams  at  least,  when  that  autocracy  shall  have 
been  blown  to  the  winds,  when  that  bureau- 
cracy shall  have  dried  up  and  wasted  away, when 
that  exaggerated  militarism  shall  be  but  bleach- 
ing bones  and  dust. 

Who  has  not  lived  in  Germanv  as  a  house  of 


598     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

dreams,  seen  the  Valkyrie  race  by,  heard  the 
swan  song,  wept  with  Werther  and  with  Mar- 
guerite, smiled  cynically  with  Mephistopheles, 
languished  with  the  Palm  Tree  and  the  Pine  of 
Heine;  who  has  not  sat  at  the  feet  of  Germany 
as  a  philosopher,  and  traced  the  very  fissures 
of  his  own  brain  in  following  thinking  into 
thought;  but  who  in  all  the  world  longs  for  this 
new  Germany  of  the  barracks,  the  corporal  and 
the  pedler?  Germania  as  a  malicious  vestal 
clad  in  horrid  armor  and  making  mischief  in 
the  world  is  a  very  present  danger;  Germania 
with  a  torch  lighting  the  world  to  salvation  is 
a  phantom,  a  ghost,  seen  by  hasty  and  nervous 
observers,  who  rush  out  to  proclaim  an  advent- 
ure that  may  excite  a  passing  interest  in  them- 
selves. Her  methods  to-day  are  solution  by  suf- 
focation; no  wonder  those  of  us  who  loved  her 
in  our  youth  see  in  her  a  ghost  to-day.  I  am 
thankful  that  I  was  her  pupil  when  she  had 
other  things  to  teach,  when  she  wore  other 
robes,  when  she  was  modest,  and  not  snatching 
at  the  trident  of  Neptune,  nor  clutching  at  the 
casque  of  Mars. 

"Wir  wissen  zu  viel,  wir  wollen  zu  wenig," 
became  the  national  complaint,  and  Germany 
has  attempted  to  transform  herself.  She  has 
succeeded  in  the  transformation,  but  the  trans- 


CONCLUSION  599 

formation  is  not  a  success.  Even  that  learned 
English  friend  of  Germany,  Lord  Haldane, 
does  not  see,  or  will  not  see,  that  a  people 
thinking  themselves  into  action,  instead  of  de- 
veloping into  action  naturally,  through  action, 
must  suffer  from  the  artificiality  of  the  proc- 
ess. Lord  Haldane  applauds  their  thought-out 
organization  in  industrial,  commercial,  and  mil- 
itary matters,  but  he  fails  to  mention  the 
squandering  of  individual  capacity  and  energy 
that  has  resulted  in  Germany 's  growing  depend- 
ence upon  a  wooden  bureaucracy.  Organiza- 
tion is  only  good  as  a  means ;  it  is  stupefying  as 
an  end.  Germany  has  organized  herself  into 
an  organization,  and  is  the  most  over-governed 
country  in  the  world.  What  every  democracy 
of  free  men  wants  is  not  as  much,  but  as  little, 
organization  as  possible  compatible  with  eco- 
nomical administration  of  industry,  the  army, 
the  navy,  and  the  affairs  of  the  state.  You  can 
think  out  a  game  of  chess,  but  you  cannot  think 
out  life  ahead  of  the  living  of  it  without  cramp- 
ing it  and  finally  killing  it.  Life  is  to  live,  not 
to  think,  after  all.  Neither  a  nation  nor  an  in- 
dividual has  ever  thought  out  the  way  to 
power.  This  is  where  the  metaphysician  in- 
variably fails  when  he  mistakes  thinking  for 
living,  when  he  mistakes  organization,  which 


600     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

can  never  be  more  than  a  mould  for  life,  for  life 
itself.  To  plan  an  army  is  not  to  produce  one, 
however  good  the  plan;  even  to  plan  a  cam- 
paign, once  you  have  an  army,  is  to  court  dis- 
aster unless  there  is  a  living  man  to  thrust  the 
plan  aside  when  the  emergencies  arise  that  make 
up  the  whole  of  life,  but  have  nothing  to  do 
wrjjj  organization. 

If  all  men  were  tailors,  or  lawyers,  or  farmers, 
or  miners,  then  we  could  think  out  an  organiza- 
tion into  which  they  would  fit,  but  unfortunately 
for  the  metaphysician,  all  men  are  not  categories; 
all  men  are  men !  In  like  manner,  if  all  men  were 
cases,  then  government  by  lawyers  would  be 
successful,  but  men  and  women  are  neither 
categories  nor  cases.  It  is  purely  fantastic,  the 
mere  reasoned  confusion  of  the  philosopher,  to 
point  to  Spinoza,  Kant,  and  Hegel  and  their 
successors  as  the  originators  of  Germany's  prog- 
ress. If  Germany  had  developed  along  those 
lines,  she  would  be  something  quite  different 
from  what  she  is.  The  Great  Elector,  Frederick 
the  Great,  Napoleon,  and  Bismarck  made  Ger- 
many, and  her  philosophers  and  pedants  are 
only  responsible  for  the  softness  that  made  it 
possible.  Metaphysicians  and  lawyers  have 
their  place,  but  they  will  inevitably  ruin  any 
people  whom  they  are  permitted  to  govern. 

The  reader  will  perhaps  look  back  through 


CONCLUSION  601 

these  pages  to  discover  a  contradiction.  He  will 
seem  to  find  evidence  that  Germany's  position 
in  the  world  called  for  just  this  present  Germany, 
which  is  a  factory  town  with  a  garden  attached, 
surrounded  by  an  armed  camp.  I  deny  the  con- 
tradiction. I  have  tried  to  analyze  and  to  give 
the  reasons  for  Germany's  development  along 
these  meretricious  and  disappointing  lines,  but 
I  am  the  last  to  admit  that  the  outcome  is  satis- 
factory, or  that  the  rest  of  the  world  should 
look  to  Germany  to  point  out  the  way  of  salva- 
tion. A  steaming  orchid-house  is  not  the  place 
to  go  to  learn  to  grow  the  fruits  of  the  earth  in 
their  due  season  for  the  nourishment  of  a  free 
people.  You  will  find  some  brilliantly  colored 
flowers  there,  in  the  gay  uniforms  of  the  arti- 
ficial tropics,  but  they  shrink  and  shrivel  in  the 
open  air.  They  have  been  trained  to  grow 
luxuriantly  in  this  stifling  atmosphere,  but  they 
feed  no  one,  please  no  one,  who  will  not  consent 
to  live  in  a  glass  house  with  them. 

Because  a  people  is  blindfolded,  its  preachers 
and  pedagogues  gagged,  its  officials  subservient, 
is  all  the  more  reason  why  they  should  be  easily 
led,  but  no  reason  at  all  for  supposing  that  they 
will  lead  anybody  else. 

I  have  said  here  and  there  that  I  have  learned 
much,  and  that  we  all  have  much  to  learn  from 
Germany.  I  permit  myself  to  repeat  it.  She 


602     GERMANY  AND  THE  GERMANS 

has  shown  us  that  the  short-cut  to  the  govern- 
ing of  a  people  by  suppression  and  strangulation 
results  in  a  dreary  development  of  mediocrity. 
She  has  proved  again  that  the  only  safety  in  the 
world  for  either  an  individual  or  a  nation  is  to 
be  loved  and  respected,  and  in  these  days  no 
one  respects  slavery  or  loves  threats. 

From  an  American  point  of  view,  any  sacrifice, 
any  war,  were  better  than  the  domination  of  the 
Prussian  methods  of  nation-making.  No  nation 
should  be  by  its  traditions  and  its  ideals  more 
ready  to  arm  itself,  and  to  keep  itself  armed  if 
necessary  for  years,  against  the  possibility  of 
the  transference  of  such  methods  to  the  Amer- 
ican continent  than  the  United  States  of  North 
America. 

"Theuer  ist  mir  der  Freund,  doch  auch  den  Feind  kann  ich 

niitzen," 
Zeigt  mir  der  Freund,  was  ich  kann,  lehrt  mir  der  Feind  was  ich 

soil," 

writes  Schiller. 

We  Americans  have  much  to  learn  from  both 
our  friends  and  our  enemies.  We  have  both  in 
Germany,  and  we  should  cultivate  the  temper  of 
mind  which  profits  by  the  encouragement  of  our 
friends  and  the  criticism  of  our  foes. 


ff* 


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This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


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21 


JUN  4      - 

f JUN  1 2  T 

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JWi* 


, 
FEB 


•> 
' 


JAN     4  193$ 
JAN  '3  1  W?< 


DEC  2 


Form  L-9-15m-7,'35 


AUG  1 


AU63:0 


967 


0.3 


A    001  205  658    6 


7  - 


